A response to 6.2
Foretells the story of the chapter of 'Al-Alak'

"illiterate", "read" and Waraqa

1. The assertion at the beginning of this part is: "Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was illiterate." This "illiterate" is a much questioned translation of the Arabic word "ummi", which verbally means "popular". It's highly unbelievable that Muhammad, who according to his usually told biography was a descendent of the Meccan nobility and served as a say managing director of his wife Khadidja's commercial enterprise, actually were not able to read and write. The most probable understanding of Muhammad's claim to be "ummi" is that he spoke the Arabic vernacular of his surrounding and was not able to write poems in Classical Arabic, the more or less artificial language of contemporary poets. This claim was important to cover his and the Qur'ans tracks and to let the Qur'an look like Pallas Athene springing from Zeus' head. Actually the language of the say primordial Qur'an was the Arabic vernacular, which was more or less the same as the Christian-Arabic "koine".

Al-Kadhi continues with the traditional frame story invented in later times to give surat al-Alaq (sura 96) the traditional understanding. I hope soon to be able to present on my new website the original text and meaning of this sura, which was a fine example of pious poetry. For instance: The word "iqra'", which Al-Kadhi as most Muslims makes much ado about, actually didn't mean "read", but "praise". So the first line had the meaning: "Praise the name of the lord who created..." and not this odd: "Read in the name of the lord who created..."

Especially, Al-Kadhi's connection of this alledged "Read!" to the "Read" in Isaiah 29:11 ff. is forcible. It doesn't have any importance.

2. The story of Waraqa ibn Nawfal believing in Muhammad's prophethood and supporting him at the end of this chapter is a fake in Ibn Hisham's fraudulent edition of Ibn Ishaq's "Biography of the Prophet". This fake is thus clumsy that later pious story tellers didn't cite these passages in Ibn Hisham's book but prefered to give some paraphrase of his story, as Al-Kadhi does, too. The fake is even so clumsy that it's easy to reconstruct the original text showing that Waraqa actually was a bitter opponent to Muhammad. I posted this in soc.religion.islam two months ago and I'm going to present the whole story on my web-site.

Al-Kadhi repeats this pious fake about Waraqa in Chapter 10 under the title "The Beginning of the Prophethood", changing his spelling from "Waraqah" in Chapter 6.2 to "Waraka".

Kind regards,

Christoph Heger


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