O you who have attained to faith! Do not take for your friends such as mock at your faith and make a jest of it - be they from among those who have been vouchsafed revelation before your time, or [from among] those who deny the truth [of revelation as such] - but remain conscious of God, if you are [truly] believers: 57 for, when you call to prayer, they mock at it and make a jest of it - simply because they are people who do not use their reason. 58 Say thou: O people of the Book! what is it that ye persecute us for save that we believe in Allah and in that which hath been sent down unto us and that which hath been sent down aforetime? and most of you are transgressors. 59 Say: 'Shall I tell you who will receive a worse recompense from Allah than that? Those whom Allah has cursed and with whom He is angry, and made some of them apes and swine, and those who worship the devil. The place of these is worse, and they have strayed further from the Right Path' 60 When they come to you they say, "We believe," but they come [with the resolve] to deny the truth and leave in the same state. God knows best what they are concealing. 61 And thou seest many of them vying one with another in sin and transgression and their devouring of illicit gain. Verily evil is what they do. 62 Why do not their men of God and their rabbis forbid them to make sinful assertions and to swallow all that is evil? Vile indeed is what they contrive! 63 The Jews say: 'The Hand of Allah is fettered. It is their own hands which are fettered, and they stand cursed for the evil they have uttered. No! His Hands are outspread; He spends as He wills. Surely the message that has been revealed to you from your Lord has increased many of them in their in-surgence and unbelief, and so We have cast enmity and spite among them until the Day of Resurrection. And as often as they kindle the fire of war, Allah extinguishes it; and they go about trying to spread mischief on earth, whereas Allah does not love those who spread mischief. 64 Had the People of the Book only believed and been God-fearing, We should surely have effaced from them their evil deeds, and caused them to enter Gardens of Bliss. 65 And had they kept the Taurat and the Injeel established, and what was sent down towards them from their Lord, they would have received sustenance from above and from beneath their feet; among them is a group who is fair; but most of them commit extremely evil deeds. 66