“…through you I seize, through you I give, through you is reward, and through you is punishment.” This ḥadīth is fabricated, as all specialists in ḥadīth agree. Al-Dāraqutnī stated this explicitly, naming the forger, and the same judgment was recorded by Abū Ḥātim ibn Ḥibbān, al-ʿUqaylī, Ibn al-Jawzī, and many others.

Even setting its chain aside, the wording itself—“The first thing Allah created was the intellect; He said to it…”—merely shows that He addressed the intellect at the very beginning of its own creation; it does not establish that the intellect was the first of all created things. The sequel, “I have not created any creature more noble to Me than you,” indicates that something else had already been created before it, and it makes plain that the intellect itself is a created entity.

Abū Ḥāmid distinguishes between the “world of creation” and the “world of command,” placing bodies in the former and souls and intellects in the latter. Such a division, however, is not part of the Muslims’ religion, for in Islam everything other than Allah is created, and Allah—exalted be He—is the Creator of all things.

If they then claim that the “intellects” they affirm are actually the angels spoken of by the prophets, the texts of Revelation and the unanimous agreement of the ummah testify that Allah created the angels—and that He created them from a substance. In Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, ʿĀʾisha relates that the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—said:

“Allah created the angels from light, and He created …”