and the Quran encompasses both its meanings and its wording. Taken together, these are not the speech of anyone other than Allah, by the unanimous agreement of the Muslims. To state without qualification that the Quran is the speech of Gabriel, Muhammad, or any other created being is disbelief; none of the leading scholars of the Muslims has said this.

Indeed, Allah sternly condemned anyone who says that it is the word of a mortal. He, Most High, said:

“Leave Me with the one I created alone,”

up to His words:

“He thought and deliberated.
May he be destroyed—how he deliberated!
Again, may he be destroyed—how he deliberated!
Then he looked,
then he frowned and scowled,
then he turned away and was arrogant,
and said, ‘This is nothing but magic handed down;
this is nothing but the word of a mortal.’
I will cast him into Saqar.
And what will make you know what Saqar is?”

Whoever says that the Quran is the word of a mortal has disbelieved, as has anyone who says that it is the word of an angel.

Only one of two kinds of men says that it is Gabriel’s word: either a man from among the heretics and philosophers who say that it is an emanation flowing into the Prophet’s soul from the Active Intellect, which they identify as Gabriel. They also say that Gabriel is the imagined form that takes shape within the soul of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. They say that he received it as abstract meanings, which then took the form of letters within his soul, just as forms arise within the soul of a sleeper. This is what Ibn ʿArabī, the author of al-Fusūs, and other heretics say.

For this reason, he claims that he draws from the same source from which the angel who conveys it as revelation to the Messenger draws. For, according to him, the “source” is the intellect, and the “angel” is the imagined form within his soul. In their view, the Prophet receives from this imagined form.