Shaykh al-Islām—may Allah have mercy on him—was asked about a man who said:

“Allah did not truly speak to Moses; rather, He created speech and sound in the tree, and Moses, peace be upon him, heard from the tree, not from Allah. Nor did Allah, Mighty and Majestic, speak the Quran to Gabriel; rather, Gabriel took it from the Preserved Tablet.” Is he correct or not?

He replied:

Praise be to Allah. This man is not correct. Rather, he is misguided, a fabricator and a liar, according to the agreement of the early generations of the Muslim community and its leading scholars. Indeed, he is an unbeliever who must be called upon to repent and, unless he repents, be put to death.

If he says, “I do not deny the wording of the Quran”—namely, Allah’s statement,

“And Allah spoke to Moses directly”

—“Rather, I acknowledge that this wording is true, but I deny its meaning and reality,” then such people are the Jahmiyyah, whom the early generations and leading scholars unanimously regarded as among the worst adherents of deviant beliefs and innovations. Many leading scholars even excluded them from the seventy-two sects. The first person in Islam to express this doctrine was a man called al-Ja‘d ibn Dirham