" When they were all assembled, the Negus spoke to them and said: “What is this religion wherein ye have become separate from your people, though ye have not entered my religion nor that of any other folk that surround us?” And Ja’far answered him saying: “O King, we were a people steeped in ignorance, worshipping idols, eating unsacrificed carrion, committing abominations, and the strong would devour the weak. Thus we were, until God sent us a Messenger from out of our midst, one whose lineage we knew, and his veracity and worthiness of trust and his integrity. He called us unto God, that we should testify to His Oneness and worship Him, and renounce what we and our fathers had worshipped in the way of stones and idols; and he commanded us to speak truly, to fulfil our promises, to respect the ties of kinship and the rights of our neighbours, and to refrain from crimes and from bloodshed. So we worship God alone, setting naught beside Him, counting as forbidden what He hath forbidden and as licit what He hath allowed. For these reasons have our people turned against us, and have persecuted us to make us forsake our religion and revert from the worship of God to the worship of idols... "

― , Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources