That is, "A Book like the Quran has been sent down to you in spite of your being unlettered. Is it not by itself a great miracle which should convince the people of your Prophethood? Do they yet need another miracle after this? The other miracles were the miracles for those who witnessed them. But this miracle is ever present in front of them. It is being recited before them almost daily; they can witness it as and when they like." Even after such an assertion and argument by the Quran the audacity of those who try to prove that the Prophet (peace be upon him) was literate is astonishing. The fact, however, is that the Quran here has presented in clear terms the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) being illiterate as a strong proof of his prophethood. The traditions which lend support to the claim that the Prophet (peace be upon him) could read and write, or had learned reading and writing later in life, stand rejected at first glance, for no tradition opposed to the Quran can be acceptable. Then these traditions in themselves are too weak to become the basis for an argument. One of these is a tradition from Bukhari that when the peace treaty of Hudaibiya was being written down, the representative of the disbelievers of Makkah objected to the word Rasul-Allah being added to the name of the Prophet (peace be upon him). At this the Prophet ordered the writer (Ali, may Allah be pleased with him) to cross out the word Rasul-Allah and write Muhammad bin Abdullah instead. Ali refused to cross out Rasul-Allah. Then the Prophet (peace be upon him) took it in his own hand, struck out the word himself and wrote Muhammad bin Abdullah.

But this tradition from Bara bin Azib appears at four places in Bukhari and at two places in Muslim and everywhere in different words: