When Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was presenting the Message of God to the tribesmen of Makkah, it was not that every person was ready to accept it. Only a few blessed souls, whom God willed to guide to the Truth, responded positively and became followers and supports of the Prophet. Those who chose to reject the Divine Message left no stone unturned to criticise the Prophet, to reject him and in fact to sabotage the Prophet’s mission. But the Prophet ﷺtook all this criticism in stride as God Himself advised him to bear all vain things with utmost patience and forsake the critics.
The Qur’ān (73:10) said to the Prophet: “And bear patiently the vain things they utter, and gracefully forsake them.” Here gracefully forsaking the critics does not mean breaking off all ties with them and stopping preaching to them; but rather it advised the Prophet not to have intimate and friendly relations with them, and disregard their foolish behaviour and nonsense talks without showing any grief or anger but gracefully like a noble person. This divine instruction was given in the Qur’ān so as to tell the Prophet’s critics that it is not due to any weakness on the part of the Prophet ﷺthat he is not responding to what you are saying against him, but God Himself has taught him to adopt this noble way of conduct in response to ‘vain things’.
Then in the very next āyah(73:11) the Qur’ān tells the Prophet: “Leave it to Me to deal with the affluent ones who give the lie (to the Truth), and bear with them for a while.” This āyah informs the reader that the people, who were denying the Prophet ﷺin Makkah and were inciting the common people to oppose and resist him were the well-to-do, prosperous and affluent persons of the society.It was their mundane interests, which were being hit by the Divine Message the Prophet was preaching. The Qur’ān repeatedly [in Surah Al-Aaraf, āyahs 60, 66, 75, 88 and Surah Al-Mominoon, āyah 33 and others] tells us that this was not only to the Prophet’s case but in every age this very class of people has been the main obstacle to every movement of reform.
In āyah73:12, the Qur’ān says: “We have heavy fetters and a blazing Fire in store for them.” This is the strong warning and means to say that the critics of the Divine Message, if they do not mend their ways, will be subjected to such punishments. May God protect us from the Divine wrath.