directly,” and His words:

“Those messengers—We favored some over others. Among them were those to whom Allah spoke, and He raised some in rank,”

and His words:

“When Moses came at Our appointed time and his Lord spoke to him,”

entail that Allah Himself is the one who speaks. Just as it is impossible to say that He is a speaker by virtue of speech inhering in another, it is impossible to say that He spoke by means of speech inhering in another.

These, then, are five arguments:

First, the Jahmiyyah’s position necessarily entails that every instance of speech Allah creates is His speech. For, according to them, calling the Quran Allah’s speech means nothing more than that He created it; whoever produces speech, even in another, is, in their view, the one who speaks it. For them, speech denotes nothing inhering in the essence of the Lord Most High. If the meaning of “inhering” indicates His having created a sound in a subject—and a proof must apply consistently—then every sound He creates must likewise be His speech. They allow created sound to have any qualities whatsoever. Thus, on their account, no distinction remains between sound that is the speech of Allah Most High and sound that is not speech.

Second, when an attribute—such as knowledge, power, speech, or motion—inheres in a subject, its corresponding description applies to that subject, not to another.

Third, from it are derived the verbal noun, the active participle, and the assimilated adjective