Apostate prophet is a book critic; why naming Abu Lahab in the Quran?

In answer to the video "Allah is Merciless"

The most prominent evil personalities and groups of people, in the nations prophets and messengers were sent to, those whose behavior and rejection were most violent towards the prophetic message and the prophets themselves, were always pointed out by the prophets and scriptures of their specific time.

The prophets all of them, called for God's curse and punishement to be inflicted upon these people either in this world or the next, as well as the vindication of the righteous. The Quran sometimes mentions these opponents implicitly as in 44:47-50,74:11-27,91:12,96:9-19 or explicitly, as with Abu Lahab in Sura Lahab, but everytime, the exposition of their evil traits serves as a threat and warning to future people.

Among many Biblical similarities there is the case of the prophet David against Nabal and Doeg 1Sam25:39,Ps52, David's long-winded curse of Esau and his descendants

Ps109:8-15"May his days be few, and may someone else take his office of dignity. May his sons be orphans and his wife a widow. May his sons wander, and [people] should ask and search from their ruins..."

or the implicit mention of a group of people

Ps58:1-12"O God, smash their teeth in their mouth..Let them be rejected..The righteous man will rejoice because he saw revenge; he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked. And man will say, "Truly, the righteous man has reward; truly there is a God Who judges on earth".

Again a reference to a group of moral harassers and mockers upon whom David invokes God's curses Ps35:19-26. See also Ps63:9-12,69:22-29 or Ps137:8-9 in reference to the Babylonian oppressors

"Praiseworthy is he who will take and dash your infants against the rock"

or also Belshazzar and Nebuchadnezzar alternatively implied by the prophet Habakkuk who calls on God to destroy them throughout the chapter (Habakkuk2).

In the Quran, another instance of allusion to a contemporary of the prophet happens in 68:10-16, where an individual's evil, sinful traits are exposed. This teaches the audience and readers at all times, to be wary from such a person, whether those contemporaries to him who will recognize the depictions made of him or from anyone bearing those immoral characteristics

"Do not at all yield to any mean swearer of many oaths, who is a slanderer and a backbiter, a hinderer of good and a transgressor, utullin/(connoting bad tempered, vengeful, coarse in manners, and shameless), and above all zanim/(connoting one known for his ignobleness and meanness. It is also used for those whose descent is unknown, which doesnt apply in this case to ibn al Mughirah who is implied here), only because he has abundance of wealth and children. When Our Revelations are recited to him, he says, "These are tales of the ancient times." Soon We shall brand him on the snout".

Because he thought he was a man of high prestige, his nose has been called a snout, and

"branding him on the snout"

is a double disgrace, physical and psychological. The same idea is repeated elsewhere, addressing those to whom outward appearance is everything, and how the scorching wind of Hell destroys the skin, leaving nothing but ugliness on that most precious part of these people's selves. In the Hebrew Bible, with immense despise, God addresses Sennacherib of Assyria through the prophet Isaiah

2Kings19:28"I will place my ring in your nose and My bit in your lips".

See also Isa37:29 or Ps3:8 all speaking of severe and humiliating disfigurement of the wicked, a metonym for utter abasement.

The prophet, at the onset of his mission and later on had many opponents who took up arms against him and rejected him but none of them came close to Abu Lahab. It was his own uncle whose level of hatred did not spare neither the prophetic mission, its principles and the personality of the prophet himself which the rest of his enemies rarely attacked.

There is also an element of sarcasm in naming him. Abu Lahab is a nickname given to him in pre-Islamic times, to symbolize many positive and sought after traits of him; lahab is a beautiful red flickering flame and Abu Lahab was a handsome man who in addition had a reddish skin complexion. He was a wealthy, aristocratic celebrity who was the grandson of the Hashemites, the most prominent clan of Quraysh. His own wife, nicknamed umm jamil for her beauty, was likewise of high family nobility, being the granddaughter of Umaya, the other most important Qurayshi clan. Why does God call him by that nickname that evoked many positive aspects in his society? Simply to mean that just as he desired to be known after the fire, so shall his name primarily evoke fire until eternity, but not the fire of beauty, the fire of chastisement

"Perished both hands of Abu Lahab...he shall have to endure a fire fiercely glowing/LAHABIN". 

The meaning of the short sura is that Abu Lahab was an evil man, he and his wife, that they were influential in a harmful way as alluded with the "breaking" of the "hands". The hands are a metonym of power, deeds and their outcome, influence and even accomplices in Classical Arabic. The Quraysh elite were those accomplices, killed 2 years later in Badr, followed by Abu Lahab himself 2 weeks later from illness. In the same manner and sense, Ezekiel prophecied how the arms of Pharaoh will be "broken" while those of the king of Babylon will be "strengthened" Ezek30:22-5. David spoke of God's destroying the unrighteous' power with the following words

Ps37:17"the arms of the wicked shall be broken, but the Lord supports the righteous".

Abu Lahab and his wife amassed a lot of wealth hence the sura's association of their possessions with their inevitable doom. However we are told that this wealth will be useless to save them from the punishement in the hereafter. The sura is in short an illustration of the Quranic principle that no earthly power can upset God's plans and no bargaining with any kind of wealth will be possible to escape due justice.