God’s words and the Qur’an
The Qur’an is God’s word: He truly said it in sounds, words and surahs. We do not say that ‘it is mere meaning without utterance’, but we say that God speaks whenever He wills: ‘God has spoken His word directly to Moses’. (4: 164).
God’s words and the Qur’an
The Qur’an is God’s word: He truly said it in sounds, words and surahs. We do not say that ‘it is mere meaning without utterance’, but we say that God speaks whenever He wills:
‘God has spoken His word directly to Moses’. (4: 164) ‘When Moses came for Our appointment and his Lord spoke to him’. (7: 143)
His word is what He says:
‘God says the truth and He alone shows the right path’. (33: 4)
God’s word is memorized in people’s hearts:
‘Nay, but this [Qur’an] consists of verses that are clear to the hearts of those gifted with real knowledge’. (29: 49)
It is heard with people’s ears:
‘If any of the idolaters seeks asylum with you, grant him protection so that he may hear the word of God and then convey him to his place of safety’. (9: 6)
The fact that it was God’s messenger who delivered it to us does not alter the fact that it is God’s own word.
It is written down as God says:
‘By a scripture inscribed on unrolled parchment’. (52: 3)
God has preserved it on a tablet He has kept:
‘This is indeed a glorious Qur’an, inscribed on an imperishable tablet’. (85: 21–2)
‘It originates in the source of revelation kept with Us; it is indeed sublime, full of wisdom’. (43: 4)
The fact that it is written down does not alter the fact that it is God’s word, since paper is created like ink is created. God says:
‘Even if We had sent down to you a book written on paper and they had touched it with their own hands’. (6: 7)
He thus makes the book and the paper two different things.
Confirming that the Qur’an is His own word, even though it is written with created pens and created ink, He says:
‘Were all the trees on earth to be made into pens, and the sea ink, with seven more seas yet added to it, the words of God would not be exhausted’. (31: 27)
‘Say: “If the sea were ink for my Lord’s words, the sea would surely dry up before my Lord’s words are exhausted, even though we were to add to it another sea to replenish it”’. (18: 109)
So, what is written with pens and what is not written is God’s word and it is all the same.
Whoever says that God’s word is a creature is an unbeliever, because God’s speech is one of His attributes. He has distinguished between His creation and His words. He says:
‘Your Lord is God who has created the heavens and the earth in six aeons, and is established on the throne. He covers the day with the night in swift pursuit. The sun, the moon and the stars are subservient to His command. Surely all creation and all authority belong to Him. Blessed is God, the Lord of the worlds’. (7: 54)
In this verse, God distinguishes between His creation and His command. His creation includes those mentioned here: heavens, the earth, the sun, the moon and the stars, while His command is His speech with which He gives shape to His creatures, as He says in this verse: ‘[They are] subservient to His command’.
God created the voices of the reciters of the Qur’an just as He created their lips, tongues and throats as well as their movements, the air and their saliva. Yet this does not change the fact that what we hear from them is God’s word. He says:
‘Some of them would listen to the word of God then, having understood it, knowingly distort it?’ (2: 75)
This means that what is heard is God’s word even though it is pronounced by the reciters. It is as some scholars said: ‘The voice belongs to the reciter, but the word belongs to the Creator’.