The Shaykh’s clarification of the danger of the deviant Ash'ari school regarding the attribute of Allah’s speech (Mighty and Majestic is He), when many of them say: “And He has always been a Speaker, All-Knowing.”

The Shaykh : This narration reminded me that among what is said in this religious innovation is: “And He has always been a Speaker, All-Knowing”:
This contains an Ash'ari infiltration. They are the ones who invalidate or at least deny the reality of the divine speech and interpret it as the mental speech. In this regard, they are deniers of the divine attributes, and this is one of their marvels, because on one hand they debate the Mu'tazilah who explicitly state that the speech of Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) is created. The Asha'irah claim and utter what agrees with the people of the Sunnah and the people of hadith, saying: No, the speech of Allah is one of His attributes. But when their depths are probed and they are asked about the reality of this speech, which appears to be true, they say: We only mean by speech the mental speech, and they do not mean the verbal speech that is heard and explicitly mentioned in some of the texts of the Shari'ah from the Book and the Sunnah, such as His saying (Exalted is He) addressing Moses (peace be upon him): This text is very explicit that the speech of Allah is heard and verbal, and this is what the Asha'irah deny. They say: No, this involves likening the eternal speech of Allah to the speech of humans. Rather, what is intended by the divine speech is the mental speech, which in reality returns to the denial of the divine attributes, because the mental speech is most similar to the divine knowledge. So they point to this belief: “And He has always been a Speaker, All-Knowing”. And because the matter is as Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him) said in his refutation of the Asha'irah when he explains that they deny the true divine speech and say: It is only the mental speech. So when Allah (Mighty and Majestic) said to Moses (peace be upon him): they say: From eternity, this is the speech of Allah, because they mean what is equivalent to the divine knowledge. So he said: “And He has always been a Speaker, All-Knowing,” whereas he actually said: So Allah (Mighty and Majestic), as Imam Ahmad (may Allah have mercy on him) said: “He speaks when He wills and with what He wills”. As for the Asha'irah, for them the divine speech is the divine knowledge entirely. So they pointed to this deviation: “And He has always been a Speaker, All-Knowing”. If they say: He has always been a Speaker, All-Knowing, pointing to the mental speech with this, then this is a religious innovation unique to the Asha'irah without the other sects. Some of them were on the methodology of the Sunnah, believing in the speech of Allah (Mighty and Majestic) that it is heard speech. And as he (peace and blessings be upon him) said in the authentic hadith: And they deny the letters and purify (they claim) the Lord of the worlds from speaking with this Qur'an, which we all believe is the speech of Allah. But in reality, they do not declare that the Noble Qur'an is the speech of Allah in truth. Then they differ on who spoke with it?
So some say: It is Jibril, and some say: He took it from the Preserved Tablet and that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) did not speak with it.
And it is a marvel that one of the scholars of Al-Azhar responded in a marginal note to the book *Al-Jawharah* in creed, the creed of the Asha'irah. I saw a research of his in his marginal note on this book where he discusses the Mu'tazilah, saying to them: Why do you not believe in the divine speech when Allah (Mighty and Majestic) says: ? He poses the following question—and here is the lesson: “Is not Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) able to make Moses (peace be upon him) understand His mental speech?” He does not say, as is the requirement of the previous verse, “Is not Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) able to let Moses hear His speech?” Rather, he says: “Is He not able to make him understand?” Because this agrees with their saying: the mental speech, i.e., knowledge. As if he is saying: Is not Allah able to teach Moses what He wants to reveal to him? Not by words, but by making him understand. This is among the misfortunes of religious innovation, where one infiltrates some phrases with what carries within them a deviant belief from the belief of the people of the Sunnah and the people of hadith.