that he said:

“Better for you than it, or more beneficial to you.”

Someone might therefore suppose that the person who said this agreed with those people. But that is not so. Rather, his purpose was to explain in what respect it is better: namely, that it is more beneficial to people. For speech that is more beneficial to people is also intrinsically superior, as explained elsewhere.

Those among the later followers of Ahmad, Mālik, al-Shāfi‘ī and others who followed the path of the Kullābiyyah came to think that affirming the superiority of some of Allah’s speech over other parts was possible only according to the position of the Mu‘tazilah and others like them who say that it is created. Those who say it is created regard the superiority of some parts over others as the superiority of one created thing over another; and no one denies that some created things are superior to others.

Thus, when those people supposed that affirming the superiority of some of Allah’s speech over other parts necessarily implied that the Quran was created, they recoiled from this affirmation and rejected it because of the necessary connection they imagined. Yet the matter is not as they supposed. Rather, the early generations of the Muslim community and its vast majority say:

“The Quran is Allah’s speech, uncreated; likewise, all the rest of Allah’s speech is uncreated.”

At the same time, they say:

“Some of Allah’s speech is superior to other parts,”

as expressly stated in the Book, the Sunnah, and the reports from the Companions and their Successors, with no known disagreement among them concerning this.

My father related to us, on the authority of our grandfather Abū al-Barakāt and his companion Abū Abd Allāh ibn Abd al-Wahhāb, that they had examined the views mentioned by one of the Quran commentators concerning His words:

“We bring forth one better than it or similar to it.”

I believe they were consulting the Quran commentary of Abū Abd