The Message of Islam — Page 25
Opposition and Persecution 25 Makkah itself. On his journey to Taif, he was accompanied by Zaid ra, his freed man. In Taif, the leading townsmen received the Prophet saw and let him have his say freely, but paid little heed to his message. After a while, they began to show signs of apprehension lest his presence in Taif might embroil them with the Meccans, with whom they had trade relations, and whose friendship they valued. So they left him to be dealt with by street urchins and the riff-raff of the town. The Prophet saw and his Companion ra were finally turned out by mocking and jeering crowds who pelted them with stones. Both were wounded and bleeding as they left Taif behind them. The Prophet saw was now in a very difficult situation. He had left Makkah and he had been rejected by Taif. Under Meccan custom, he could not go back there unless his re-entry was spon- sored by some leading Meccan. There was nowhere else to go. He prayed earnestly for light, guidance, and help, and then set out with Zaid ra on the return journey to Makkah. He stopped on the way at Nakhla, and sent word to Mut’am bin Adi, a leading Meccan, asking whether he would sponsor his re-entry into Makkah. Mut’am agreed, and the Prophet saw and Zaid ra thus returned to Makkah. But the situation in Makkah was as hostile and difficult as it had been when he had left it. His prayers and the revelation that came to him steadily, containing assurances of Divine help and final triumph, were his only source of consolation and strength. The latest revelations began to hint at the necessity for him to leave Makkah. It was the town of his birth, where he had spent the whole of his life, and married, where his children had been born, and where the Divine call had come to him. Despite the bitter and