O rider, speed forth and bear from me a fervent message
To everyone who yearns for what God conveys and for the true religion.

Every servant of Allah is persecuted—
Hemmed in the very belly of Mecca, subdued and sorely tried.

Yet we have found Allah’s earth vast indeed:
It rescues one from degradation, disgrace, and humiliation.

So do not remain in the abasement of a life of shame,
Nor meet death bearing a dishonor that will never be forgotten.

We have followed the Prophet of Allah, while they have cast aside
The Prophet’s word and grown heavy on the scales of justice.

So visit Your punishment upon the people who have transgressed;
I seek refuge in You lest they prevail and tyrannize me.

—

ʿUthmān ibn Maẓʿūn, reproaching his cousin Umayyah ibn Khalaf—who used to harm him—recited:

O descendant of Taym ibn ʿAwf—by Him who sent rancor forth—
Between you and it stand the twin Sharman heights and all of Bark together!

Have you driven me out of Mecca’s heart, though mine was a rightful stay,
Only to lodge me in a desolate, glaring plain?

You fletch arrows whose feathers do not suit the shafts you hand to others;
You carve new arrows, yet keep all their finest plumage for yourself.

You have fought noble, mighty peoples
And destroyed tribes whose support you once depended upon.

You shall know—when a calamity visits you one day
And the feathered hosts desert you—what your hands have wrought.

—

Mūsā ibn ʿUqbah relates: Quraysh then consulted together, their plotting intensified, and they resolved either to kill the Messenger of Allah ﷺ or to expel him. They offered his clan blood money so they might slay him, but the clan refused out of fierce loyalty. When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ withdrew to the mountain pass of Banū ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, he ordered his Companions to leave for Abyssinia, and they departed twice. Those who set out in the first wave returned when Sūrah al-Najm was revealed.

The idolaters used to say, “If only Muḥammad would speak well of our gods, we would accept him and his followers. Yet he does not speak of his Jewish and Christian allies with the same insults and evil with which he speaks of our deities.” The Messenger of Allah ﷺ longed for their guidance. Then the revelation came: “Have you, then, considered al-Lāt and al-ʿUzzā, and Manāt, the third, the other?” (Qur’an 53:19-20). At that moment Satan insinuated the words, “and indeed they …”