Opposition

Persecution of Muslims by the Meccans and Migration to Abyssinia
According to Muslim tradition, Muhammad's(saw) wife Khadija was the first to believe he was a prophet.^[82] She was soon followed by Muhammad(saw)'s ten-year-old cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib, close friend Abu Bakr, and adopted son Zaid.^[82] Around 613, Muhammad(saw) began his public preaching (Qur'an 26:214).^[83] Most Meccans ignored him and mocked him, while a few others became his followers. There were three main groups of early converts to Islam: younger brothers and sons of great merchants; people who had fallen out of the first rank in their tribe or failed to attain it; and the weak, mostly unprotected foreigners.^[84]
According to Ibn Sad, the opposition in Mecca started when Muhammad(saw) delivered verses that condemned idol worship and the Meccan forefathers who engaged in polytheism.^[85] However, the Qur'anic exegesis maintains that it began as soon as Muhammad(saw) started public preaching.^[86] As the number of followers increased, he became a threat to the local tribes and the rulers of the city, whose wealth rested upon the Kaaba, the focal point of Meccan religious life, which Muhammad(saw) threatened to overthrow. Muhammad(saw)’s denunciation of the Meccan traditional religion was especially offensive to his own tribe, the Quraysh, as they were the guardians of the Ka'aba.^[84] The powerful merchants tried to convince Muhammad(saw) to abandon his preaching by offering him admission into the inner circle of merchants, and establishing his position therein by an advantageous marriage. However, he refused.^[84]
Tradition records at great length the persecution and ill-treatment of Muhammad(saw) and his followers.^[10] Sumayyah bint Khabbab, a slave of Abu Jahl and a prominent Meccan leader, is famous as the first martyr of Islam, having been killed with a spear by her master when she refused to give up her faith. Bilal, another Muslim slave, was tortured by Umayyah ibn Khalaf who placed a heavy rock on his chest to force his conversion.^[87][88] Apart from insults, Muhammad(saw) was protected from physical harm as he belonged to the Banu Hashim clan.^[89][90]
In 615, some of Muhammad(saw)'s followers emigrated to the Ethiopian Aksumite Empire and founded a small colony there under the protection of the Christian Ethiopian emperor Aṣḥama ibn Abjar.^[10]
An early hadith known as "The Story of the Cranes" (translation: قصة الغرانيق, transliteration: Qissat al Gharaneeq) was propagated by two Islamic scholars, Ibn Kathir al Dimashqi and Ibn Hijir al Masri, where the former has strengthened it and the latter called it fabricated^[91] (see Science of hadith). The hadith describes Muhammad(saw)'s involvement at the time of migration in an episode which historian William Muir called the "Satanic Verses". The account holds that Muhammad pronounced a verse acknowledging the existence of three Meccan goddesses considered to be the daughters of Allah, praising them, and appealing for their intercession. According to this account, Muhammad(saw) later retracted the verses at the behest of Gabriel.^{[n 7]} Islamic scholars have weakened the hadith^[92] and have denied the historicity of the incident as early as the tenth century.^[93] In any event, relations between the Muslims and their pagan fellow-tribesmen were already deteriorated and worsening.
In 617 the leaders of Makhzum and Banu Abd-Shams, two important Quraysh clans, declared a public boycott against Banu Hashim, their commercial rival, to pressurize it into withdrawing its protection of Muhammad(PBUH). The boycott lasted three years but eventually collapsed as it failed in its objective.^[94][95]