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The Quraysh make Abu Talib a strange proposal 
The Quraysh saw that their threats and challenges had been 
ignored. Muhammad was still preaching a doctrine that 
defamed their gods and the customs of their ancestors. They also 
found out that Abu Talib was not about to abandon his nephew 
in the face of threats. Instead, he seemed to be prepared to fight 
the entire tribe in order to protect him. 
The Quraysh considered the immense potential danger of the 
situation. Muhammad was popular among the people of 
Makkah, although he represented a threat to their way of life. 
They held more meetings to try to come up with ways to deal 
with him. At last, they decided to make Abu Talib a proposal. 
The idea revolved around Ammarah bin Waleed, a handsome 
young boy from the Quraysh tribe. They took him to Abu Talib 
and said, “O, Abu Talib! Take this youth from us and treat him as 
your own son. Give him your complete support. In exchange for 
him, give us your nephew – a young man who has challenged the 
ways of your forefathers and caused disputes among the Makkans, 
denouncing them as ignorant men who have deviated from the 
straight path. We shall then put him to death. After all, we are 
giving you one man in exchange for another.” 
Abu Talib could only respond to such a rediculous idea with 
sarcasm. “By God, you are offering me a bad bargain. You are 
giving me your son so that I can feed him lavishly, and asking for 
my son so that you may kill him! By God, it will never happen.” 
Persecution of the Prophet
When neither threats nor bargains proved successful in 
swaying Abu Talib, the Quraysh decided to persecute the Prophet 
. Simultaneously, they intensified their campaign against the 
believers. 

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63 
Because of the Prophet’s high position in Makkan society, 
only those of like standing dared mistreat him. Those who 
harrassed the Prophet in his own house were, Abu Lahab, 
Hakam bin Abi Al-As bin Umayya, Uqba bin Abi Mu’ayt, Aidy 
bin Hamra Thaqafi, Ibn Al-Asda Hadhab – all of whom were his 
neighbours. When the Prophet bowed down in prayer, 
someone threw the fetus of a camel on his back. Others would 
throw similar filth at his door. The Prophet would remove it 
with a piece of wood and say, “O Banu Abdu Munaf! What kind 
of neighbourhood is this?” 
Whenever Umayya bin Khalaf saw the Prophet , he would 
taunt him before the people of Makkah. Similarly, his brother, 
Abi bin Khalaf, crumbled a rotten bone and threw it in the face of 
the Prophet . He would also say to the Prophet : “O 
Muhammad, I have a horse named Ud, and I feed it three heaps 
of food so that I can kill you while upon its back!” One day the 
Prophet answered this challenge by saying, “No, it is I who will 
kill you.” The Prophet’s words came true when he killed Abi 
during the battle of Uhud. 
On another occasion, Uqba bin Mu’ayt sat beside the 
Prophet listening to him. When Abi bin Khalaf found out that 
his friend Uqba had been with the Prophet , he chided him for 
that and them said to Uqba, “Go and spit in the face of 
Muhammad.” Ever mindful that allegience to the tribe came 
before even honour and decency, Uqba rose from his seat, 
approached the Prophet , and spat in his face. 
Abu Lahab, the Prophet’s uncle, who had freed a slave to 
celebrate his nephew’s birth, became his sworn enemy from the 
day he heard his nephew call the people to Islam from atop 
Mount Safa. The two sons of Abu Lahab, Utbah and Atiba, had 
married the Prophet’s daughters, Ruqayyah and Umm Kulthoom, 
respectively. Abu Lahab ordered both is sons to divorce their 
wives, threatening never to see them again if they refused. His 
wife, Umm Jameel Ardi bint Harb, also asked them to divorce 

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64 
their wives for they had become “disbelievers”. Utbah and Atiba 
obeyed their parents and divorced the Prophet’s daughters. 
Umm Jameel was no less vicious in her enmity. Her nephew 
by marriage was posturing as a messenger, daring to oppose their 
gods she held dear. She resolved to punish him. She used to 
scatter prickly bits of wood over the path that the Prophet and 
his Companions would pass.
When Umm Jameel heard that a short chapter of the Qur’an
(Surah Abu Lahab) had been revealed to the Prophet which 
condemned her to Hell for this very act. She began searching for 
him, armed with a rock. He was sitting near the Ka’bah with Abu 
Bakr . She strode up to Abu Bakr and asked him, “Where 
has your companion gone? I have come to know that he speaks ill 
of me. By God, if I find him I shall hurl this stone at his face. 
Look, I am also a poet.” She then uttered the following verses 
and went away: We disobeyed the blameworthy, rejected his call, 
and renounced his relieigon with disdain. 
Abu Bakr was amazed that Umm Jameel had not seen the 
Prophet sitting right beside him. “O Prophet! Did she fail to 
see you?” He said, “Yes, she could not see me because Allah 
seized her sight.” 
Meanwhile, the Quraysh invented a new way of abusing the 
Prophet : they began calling him Muhammam instead of 
Muhammad, the meaning of which is the opposite of his real 
name. “Muhammad” is one who is highly praised, while