Words, Letters and Sounds

There are some deviances in this regard, where some people say that because Allah (swt) says that He speaks, and speaking is a form, and speaking has to be with words, and letters, and sounds, then Allah has words, and letters, and sounds. That's problematic, because it limits Allah in some way, like the human being. It is we who, when we want to speak, have to speak with words, letters and sounds. For somebody to hear, they need to be close enough, and so on and so forth. Allah (swt) isn't restricted by these forms of means. He can speak without sounds and letters, and that's the belief of Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jamāʿah.

The Muʿtazilah, again having this problem of no independent attributes (because if the attributes are eternal, then they have problems), pass this one off very easily, but very critically and very problematically, by saying that the speech of Allah is a created thing: that He created it in something else, as in the Lawḥ al-Maḥfūẓ, in the Messenger of Allah, through Jibrīl (peace be upon him). So it is not an eternal speech; it is something He said later on. It is a created speech. That was the biggest problem they had, and that is what they forced others to believe. It is the problem over the speech of Allah that Imam Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal had to deal with, alluded to in an earlier chapter, and so on and so forth.

It is worth looking at this in a bit more detail, because this was actually one of the most important discussions of ʿaqīdah, the one by which the whole science was called ʿilm al-kalām, according to some, though it is not as necessary today. But those who have come to study this in depth are special people, and that is why it is important to bring this up, so that they know what some of these problems were in the past.