I Cannot Read:-
Isaiah 29: "10 For Ha Shem (God) hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes; the prophets, and your heads, the seers, hath He covered. 11 And the vision of all this is become unto you as the words of a writing that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying: 'Read this, I pray thee'; and he saith: 'I cannot, for it is sealed';12 and the writing is delivered to him that is not learned, saying: 'Read this, I pray thee'; and he saith: 'I am not learned.'
*** Muhammad plagiarised and used this vision that was taught to him by either a learned Jew or a Christian to great effect as the first of his Quranic 'revelations' in his alleged encounter with the angel Gabriel ***
Bukhari Hadith 1.3:"……suddenly the Truth descended upon him while he was in the cave of Hira. The angel came to him and asked him to read [iqra] The Prophet replied, "I do not know how to read." The Prophet added, "The angel caught me (forcefully) and pressed me so hard that I could not bear it any more. He then released me and again asked me to read and I replied, 'I do not know how to read.' Thereupon he caught me again and pressed me a second time till I could not bear it any more. He then released me and again asked me to read but again I replied, 'I do not know how to read (or what shall I read)? ' Thereupon he caught me for the third time and pressed me, and then released me and said,
96: 1-3 'Read [Iqra] in the name of your Lord, who has created (all that exists) has created man from a clot. Read [Iqra] ! And your Lord is the Most Generous."
This very first 'revelation' was later relegated to the 96th Sura because the Quran is not written in a historical Timeline but as a tossed salad of events totally unconnected to each other in Time or Space.
*** Assuming for an instance that the above story is true, and that the word IQRA means READ, then it shows the angel Gabriel, Allah's emissary to Muhammad, to be an ignorant if not a very stupid angel, since he should have known that Muhammad, an alleged illiterate, could not possibly READ.
If alternatively, IQRA means RECITE, then Muhammad's answer makes very good sense, since Gabriel had not told Muhammad WHAT TO RECITE. Again, this shows Gabriel as an extremely unworthy emissary of Allah.
On the other hand, if the above version of the story is the ALTERED and NOT the true one, then all the above abiguities and contradictions are completely explained when one reads the report as depicted in the recension version by Ibn Hisham of Ibn Ishaq's 'Sirat Rassool'Allah' ORIGINAL version of the same event:
Page 106: " He came to me ,' said the apostle of Allah, 'While I was asleep, with a COVERLET OF BROCADE whereon was some WRITING,' and said, ' Read!',
I said 'WHAT SHALL I READ?'.
He pressed me with it [the coverlet] so tightly that I thought it was death; then he let me go and said,'Read!',
I said 'What shall I read?'
He pressed me with it AGAIN so tightly that I thought it was death; then he let me go and said 'Read!',
I said, 'What then shall I read?'-
and this I said only to deliver myself from him, lest he should do the same to me again'....
***The above version of events opens up a PANDORA'S BOX of questions, answers and contradictions that can change the deliberately falsified and invented dogmas by the followers of Muhammad to show that he was illiterate and hence the Quran is miraculous.
Here, there is absolutely NO DOUBT that Muhammad was at the least semi LITERATE, since Gabriel was MAKING SENSE by ordering him to READ the WRITINGS on the COVERLET, and Muhammad was not replying with
" I CANNOT READ" but with " What shall I READ".
What is even more disturbing is that the Quran asserts, that MAN was created from a CLOT; not from 'the dust of the Earth' as in the Bible, but from a Clot which is itself DEAD ***