The Qur'an Is the Word of Allah

The next section is the Qur'an, the speech of Allah. This is obviously something that has been indicated in the previous chapters, and discussed, and it has raised questions as well. Point number 35:

Article 35. The Qur'an is the word of Allah that emanated from Him without modality in its expression — without any form of description in its expression. He sent it down to His messenger as a revelation. The believers accept it as such, literally; they are certain it is, in reality, the word of Allah, the Sublime and Exalted.

One possible reason for putting this after the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), despite its being one of the attributes of Allah, is that the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) is the intermediary here, through whom the Qur'an came. That would be why al-Ṭaḥāwī introduced the Prophet (peace be upon him) first, and then added the Qur'an. That is a possibility. Nobody can read the author's mind; this is just a speculation, a speculative possibility.

This needs to be looked at carefully. He then says:

Laysa bi-makhlūqin ka-kalāmi al-bariyyah. Unlike human speech, it is eternal and uncreated.

The first thing is that the Qur'an is the kalām of Allah. That is a belief that we have, and that's what we normally say, and that's what's required of us to say: that the Qur'an is the speech of Allah (swt). It emanated from Him without modality. That shows the origin of the kalām: that it is from Allah. It originated from Him; it emanated from Him, without modality in its expression. That is what we have to be careful about. We cannot say exactly how the speech is, and so on and so forth. We have been given a bit of a description; but how Allah speaks is obviously something beyond us.