One account treats “speech” primarily as the meaning subsisting in God, with words as its signs. Another usage calls the combination of wording and meaning “Qur’an.” Some disagreement concerns linguistic designation, although genuine differences over whether eternal inner speech exists must not be erased.
Result: God’s attribute of speech is affirmed as eternal, while human recitation, sound, writing, memory and their temporal order are created acts or states. The Arabic Qur’an retains its revealed, normative and inimitable character.
This is the conceptual force of “the Qur’an is uncreated.” Objections must be evaluated by distinguishing sign, signified, literal use, figurative use and established convention. The next topic is takwīn and its relation to divine power.