Some of them may even extend this “doctrine” to all other human sounds. When their interlocutors confronted them with its implications for human sounds that are not speech, some applied it to those sounds, then extended it to the sounds of animals, such as donkeys and others. They would have to extend it to every sound, even the sounds of lutes and flutes, since there is no distinction between these and animal sounds.
Know that when ignorance reaches this degree, it becomes equivalent to someone saying: “The peg, the wall, and the calf from which leather is made are Allah’s speech”; or saying: “Yazīd ibn Mu‘āwiyah was one of the great prophets”; or saying: “Allah descends on the afternoon of ‘Arafah upon a grey camel, embracing those on foot and shaking hands with those who are riding”; or saying: “Abū Bakr and ‘Umar are not buried in the chamber,” or that they are Pharaoh and Haman, and that they were two disbelievers and enemies of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, like Abū Jahl and Abū Lahab.
Or someone saying: “‘Alī ibn Abī Tālib is the Most High, the Supreme, Lord of the heavens and the earth”; or saying: “The one whom the Jews slapped and crucified, and upon whose head they placed thorns, is the one who created the heavens and the earth, and the two hands pierced with nails are the very hands that created the heavens and the earth”; or saying: “Allah sat in Jerusalem, weeping and wailing, until one of the Jewish elders came and knelt over Him”; or that He wept until His eyes became inflamed and the angels visited Him in His illness, and that He regretted the Flood and bit His hands in remorse until blood flowed; or saying that