YOU ARE indeed the best community that has ever been brought forth for [the good of] mankind: you enjoin the doing of what is right and forbid the doing of what is wrong, and you believe in God. Now if the followers of earlier revelation had attained to [this kind of] faith, it would have been for their own good; [but only few] among them are believers, while most of them are iniquitous: 110 [but] these can never inflict more than a passing hurt on you; and if they fight against you, they will turn their backs upon you [in flight,] and will not be succoured. 111 Degraded they shall live wheresoever they be unless they make an alliance with God and alliance with men, for they have incurred the anger of God, and misery overhangs them. That is because they denied the signs of God and killed the prophets unjustly, and rebelled, and went beyond the limit. 112 ۞ The People of the Book are not all the same. Some of them are straightforward. They recite the words of God in prostration at night. 113 They believe in God and the Day of Judgment. They command people to follow good, prohibit others from committing evil and compete with each other in doing good deeds. These are the righteous ones. 114 And whatsoever good you do, you shall not be denied the just reward of it; and God knows the godfearing. 115 The wealth and the children of the unbelievers can never make them independent of God. They are the dwellers of hell wherein they will live forever. 116 The likeness of that they expend in this present life is as the likeness of a freezing blast that smites the tillage of a people who wronged themselves, and it destroyed that; God wronged them not, but themselves they wronged. 117 O you who have believed, do not take as intimates those other than yourselves, for they will not spare you [any] ruin. They wish you would have hardship. Hatred has already appeared from their mouths, and what their breasts conceal is greater. We have certainly made clear to you the signs, if you will use reason. 118 It is you who love them, but they do not love you; you believe in all the revealed Books. When they meet you, they say, "We believe," but when they are alone, they bite their fingertips with rage. Say, "Die of rage!" God is aware of what your hearts contain. 119 If a good befalls you, it grieves them, but if some evil overtakes you, they rejoice at it. But if you remain patient and become Al-Muttaqun (the pious - see V. 2:2), not the least harm will their cunning do to you. Surely, Allah surrounds all that they do. 120