The Quran

فَقالَ المَلَأُ الَّذينَ كَفَروا مِن قَومِهِ ما نَراكَ إِلّا بَشَرًا مِثلَنا وَما نَراكَ اتَّبَعَكَ إِلَّا الَّذينَ هُم أَراذِلُنا بادِيَ الرَّأيِ وَما نَرىٰ لَكُم عَلَينا مِن فَضلٍ بَل نَظُنُّكُم كاذِبينَ

Muhammad Asad

But the great ones among his people, who refused to acknowledge the truth, answered: "We do not see in thee anything but a mortal man like ourselves; and we do not see that any follow thee save those who are quite obviously the most abject among us;¹ and we do not see that you could be in any waysuperior to us:² on the contrary, we think that you are liars!"

As is evidenced by the histories of all the prophets - and particularly that of Jesus and, after him, of Muhammad - most of their early followers belonged to the lowest classes of society - the slaves, the poor and the oppressed - to whom the divine message gave the promise of an equitable social order on earth and the hope of happiness in the hereafter: and it is precisely this revolutionary character of every prophet's mission that has always made it so distasteful to the upholders of the established order and the privileged classes of the society concerned.
Lit., "We do not see in you any superiority [or "merit"] over us."