O ye who believe! take not as friends those who make a mockery and fun of your religion from among those who have been vouchsafed the Book before you and other infidels. And fear Allah if ye are believers. 57 When ye proclaim your call to prayer they take it (but) as mockery and sport; that is because they are a people without understanding. 58 Say: "O followers of earlier revelation! Do you find fault with us for no other reason than that we believe in God [alone,] and in that which He has bestowed from on high upon us as well as that which He has bestowed aforetime? - or [is it only] because most of you are iniquitous?" 59 Say: 'Shall I tell you of a recompense with God, worse than that? Whomsoever God has cursed, and with whom He is wroth, and made some of them apes and swine, and worshippers of idols -- they are worse situated, and have gone further astray from the right way. 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 shalt see many of them hastening toward sin and transgression and their devouring of the forbidden. Vile indeed is that which they have been doing! 62 Why do the masters and the rabbis not forbid them to utter sin, and consume the unlawful? Evil is the thing they have been working. 63 The Jews say: Allah's hand is fettered. Their hands are fettered and they are accursed for saying so. Nay, but both His hands are spread out wide in bounty. He bestoweth as He will. That which hath been revealed unto thee from thy Lord is certain to increase the contumacy and disbelief of many of them, and We have cast among them enmity and hatred till the Day of Resurrection. As often as they light a fire for war, Allah extinguisheth it. Their effort is for corruption in the land, and Allah loveth not corrupters. 64 And if only the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians) had believed (in Muhammad SAW) and warded off evil (sin, ascribing partners to Allah) and had become Al-Muttaqun (the pious - see V. 2:2) We would indeed have blotted out their sins and admitted them to Gardens of pleasure (in Paradise). 65 Had the People of the Book observed the Torah and the Gospel, and all that had been revealed to them from their Lord, sustenance would have been showered over them from above and risen from beneath their feet. Some among them certainly keep to the right path; but many of them do things which are evil. 66