that Allah has revealed nothing like it. Whoever says, “Everything revealed of Allah’s speech is like it in every respect,” has therefore contradicted what the Messenger reported.

Furthermore, His words have already been cited:

“The best of speech.”

Yet if all of Allah’s speech were identical, the Quran would not be better than the Torah and the Gospel. The rulings with which Allah has singled out the Quran have likewise already been discussed.

If it is said:

“We concede that Allah has assigned certain parts of His speech rewards and rulings that others do not share. In our view, however, this is solely by His will, not because that speech possesses an attribute distinguishing it from the rest.”

The reply is:

First, this contradicts the explicit texts of the Quran and Sunnah and the consensus of the early generations of the Muslim community, as well as contradicting sound reason. Moreover, it rests upon a principle held by the Jahmiyyah and Qadariyyah: that an agent possessing power and exercising choice can give preference to one of two identical things over the other without any determining factor.

Having admitted this possibility, they said:

“The Lord had always been inactive, and in the eternal past it was not possible for Him either to speak or to act. Then speech and action became possible without anything arising that would account for their transition from impossibility to possibility.”

They also said:

“An agent with the power to give preference can do so without any determining factor.”

The Jahmiyyah then said:

“The servant has no real power and therefore gives preference to nothing. Rather, Allah performs the servant’s act, and the servant’s act is itself the Lord’s act.”

And it was said by