because a messenger points to the one who sent him. This indicates that it is the word of a messenger who conveyed it from his sender. He did not say, “It is the word of an angel” or “of a human being.” Rather, He declared whoever regarded it as the word of a human being to be a disbeliever, saying:

“Leave Me to deal with the one I created alone,
and granted abundant wealth,
and sons always by his side,
and made life easy for him.
Yet he desires that I give him more.
No! He has stubbornly opposed Our signs.
I shall burden him with a steep ascent.
He thought and calculated.
May he be destroyed! How he calculated!
Again, may he be destroyed! How he calculated!
Then he looked,
then frowned and scowled,
then turned away in arrogance,
and said, ‘This is nothing but magic handed down.
This is nothing but the word of a human being.’”

Whoever says that it is the word of a human being, or of a creature other than a human being, has disbelieved. But whoever regards it as the word of a human messenger has spoken the truth, because the messenger’s role in it is only to convey and deliver it. As Allah Most High says:

“O Messenger, convey what has been sent down to you from your Lord.”

In Abū Dāwūd’s Sunan, Jābir ibn Abd Allāh reported:

“The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, used to present himself to people during the pilgrimage season, saying, ‘Is there any man who will take me to his people so that I may convey my Lord’s speech? For Quraysh have prevented me from conveying my Lord’s speech.’”

The early generations agreed that the Quran is Allah’s speech, uncreated. A number of them said, “From Him it originated, and to Him it will return.” Ahmad ibn Hanbal and others said, “From Him it originated”—meaning that He is the One who spoke it; it did not originate from anyone else, as claimed by the Jahmiyyah, who say that the Quran is created. They said that He created it in something other than Himself, so that it originated from that created locus. Their position necessarily entails that it is the speech of that created locus, not of Allah