Offers, insults, and the boycott begins

ʿUtbah ibn Rabīʿah was sent with an offer: wealth until he was the richest of them, marriage to whomever he chose, kingship over Quraysh, doctors if this was an illness. He ﷺ replied by reciting Sūrat Fuṣṣilat until ʿUtbah returned shaken. Later they proposed alternating worship — a year of their gods, a year of his Lord — and Sūrat al-Kāfirūn came down closing the door with no negotiation left open.

• 109:1–6 — 'For you your religion, and for me mine.'
• 41:1–13 — What he ﷺ recited to ʿUtbah in place of an answer.

• Everything was on offer except the one thing that could not be traded.
• Al-Kāfirūn is a boundary, not an insult: coexistence in society, no merger in worship.

Ibn Hishām, al-Sīrah; Ibn Kathīr on Sūrat al-Kāfirūn

The Companions said no one had recited the Qur'an openly to Quraysh, and ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd رضي الله عنه offered. They worried he had no clan to protect him, but he went to the Maqām and recited Sūrat ar-Raḥmān aloud. They struck his face until it bled, and he came back saying: 'The enemies of Allah were never more contemptible to me than now — if you wish I will go again tomorrow.'

• The Qur'an's first public recitation to its opponents came from a shepherd, not a chief.
• Courage in this community was never limited to the people who could afford it.

Ibn Hishām; ar-Raḥīq al-Makhtūm, al-Mubārakpūrī

Before the pilgrimage season the chiefs met with al-Walīd ibn al-Mughīrah to settle on one line to tell the Arabs, so they would not contradict each other. Poet? Soothsayer? Madman? Each was tested against what people could hear for themselves and rejected. Al-Walīd finally said the nearest thing was to call it magic that separates a man from his brother and his family. He had already admitted in private: 'By Allah, it has sweetness, and upon it is beauty; its lowest part is abundant and its highest is fruitful.' Sūrat al-Muddaththir answered him by name.

• 74:18–25 — He reflected and planned — then said, 'This is nothing but magic imitated.'

• Their own expert admitted the Qur'an was unlike anything they had, then chose a label anyway.
• Propaganda needs agreement; truth does not need a committee.

Al-Ḥākim, al-Mustadrak 2:506; Ibn Hishām; ar-Raḥīq al-Makhtūm, al-Mubārakpūrī

Unable to stop the daʿwah and unable to reach him ﷺ while Abū Ṭālib protected him, Quraysh drew up a written agreement: no buying or selling with Banū Hāshim and Banū al-Muṭṭalib, no marriage, no social contact, until they surrendered Muḥammad ﷺ. The document was hung inside the Kaʿbah, and the clans withdrew to the valley of Abū Ṭālib.

• Persecution escalated from insult to organised economic siege — the tactic is old.
• Believing and non-believing kin were besieged together; clan loyalty carried people who had not accepted Islam.

Ibn Hishām, al-Sīrah; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāyah wa-n-Nihāyah