۞ O YOU who have attained to faith! Be ever steadfast in upholding equity, bearing witness to the truth for the sake of God, even though it be against your own selves or your parents and kinsfolk. Whether the person concerned be rich or poor, God's claim takes precedence over [the claims of] either of them. Do not, then, follow your own desires, lest you swerve from justice: for if you distort [the truth,] behold, God is indeed aware of all that you do! 135 O believers, believe in God and His Messenger and the Book He has revealed to His Apostle, and the Books revealed before. But he who believes not in God and His angels and the Books and the prophets and the Last Day, has wandered far away. 136 Allah will neither forgive nor show the right way to those who believed, and then disbelieved, then believed, and again disbelieved, and thenceforth became ever more intense in their disbelief. 137 Bear unto the hypocrites the tidings that for them there is a painful doom; 138 who take the unbelievers for their allies in preference to the believers. Do they seek honour from them whereas honour altogether belongs to Allah alone? 139 And it hath been revealed to you in the Book that when ye hear Allah's revelations being disbelieved in and mocked at, sit not down with them until they plunge in a discourse other than that; for, then, ye would surely become like unto them. Verily Allah is about to gather hypocrites and infidels in Hell together. 140 The hypocrites wait to see what happens to you and, if God grants you a victory, they say, "Were we not on your side?" And if those who deny the truth have a share of it [victory] they say to them, "Did we not help you win, and protect you from the believers?" God will judge between you [all] on Resurrection Day. And never will God allow those who deny the truth to harm the believers. 141