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 They will not harm you except for [some] annoyance. And if they fight you, they will show you their backs; then they will not be aided. 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 ۞ Yet they are not all alike. There are among the People of the Book an upstanding nation that recite the verses of Allah (the Koran) throughout the night and prostrate themselves, 113 They believe in Allah and the Last Day; they enjoin what is right, and forbid what is wrong; and they hasten (in emulation) in (all) good works: They are in the ranks of the righteous. 114 Whatever good they do shall not go unappreciated, and Allah fully knows those who are pious. 115 [But,] behold, as for those who are bent on denying the truth - neither their worldly possessions nor their children will in the least avail them against God: and it is they who are destined for the fire, therein to abide. 116 The wealth they spend in this worldly life is like a freezing wind that smites the harvest of a people who have wronged themselves and destroys it. Allah has not wronged them, but they wronged themselves. 117 O you who believe! do not take for intimate friends from among others than your own people; they do not fall short of inflicting loss upon you; they love what distresses you; vehement hatred has already appeared from out of their mouths, and what their breasts conceal is greater still; indeed, We have made the communications clear to you, if you will understand. 118 Ah! ye are those who love them, but they love you not,- though ye believe in the whole of the Book. When they meet you, they say, "We believe": But when they are alone, they bite off the very tips of their fingers at you in their rage. Say: "Perish in your rage; Allah knoweth well all the secrets of the heart." 119 If good comes your way, they are vexed; but if evil befalls you they are pleased and rejoice; yet if you are patient and guard yourselves against evil, their cunning will not harm you in the least, for whatsoever they do is well within the reach of God. 120