Glorified is He; rather, they are an expression of it, and they are created.
Thus, he agreed with them in saying they are created, and added to them that they are neither a Qur'an nor the speech of God, Glorified is He.
If they claim that they acknowledge them to be a Qur'an, it is said to them: They only acknowledge that figuratively, for it is from their school of law that the Qur'an is uncreated, and that the letters are created, and the surahs are letters by agreement; whoever denies that is not to be addressed. And if they are created letters, it is not permissible for them to be an uncreated Qur'an." End quote.
Al-Harawī, may Allah have mercy on him, said in Dhamm al-Kalām (5/136): "And those [meaning the Jahmiyya] said: He has no speech; He only created speech.
And these say: He spoke once, so He is speaking it since He spoke; the speech has not ceased, and His speech is not found in a place where He is not... Then they said: He has neither sound nor letter.
And they said: It is ink and paper... and this is the voice of the reciter... So they evaded and said: This is a quotation by which the Qur'an is expressed, and God spoke once, and does not speak after that. Then they said: It is uncreated, and whoever says it is created is a disbeliever.
This is one of their traps by which they hunt the hearts of the commoners of the people of the Sunna, whereas their actual belief is: (The Qur'an does not exist). The male Jahmiyya uttered it once, and the female Ash'arites uttered it ten times." End quote.
Al-Zanjānī (d. 471 AH), may Allah have mercy on him, said in his commentary on his poem (p. 110): "As for ʿAbdullāh b. Saʿīd b. Kullāb, he was a Christian from the people of Basra, then he accepted Islam and left his people... He is the one who claims that God has no speech heard from Him, and that Gabriel did not hear anything from God of what he conveyed to His messengers, and that what was revealed to the prophets is a quotation of the speech of God, and that the speech of God is neither a command nor a prohibition, nor a report nor an inquiry, but rather that is known from Him by another meaning, and that God has no words, and that His speech is one single thing that is neither a surah, nor verses of words, nor any of the languages. Thus, he began by belying the Qur'an... and he opposed the entire Umma regarding what is on earth being the speech of God and His Book. He, al-Ashʿarī, and others from the Lafẓiyya used to claim that the speech of God in
