O ye who believe! take not for friends and protectors those who take your religion for a mockery or sport,- whether among those who received the Scripture before you, or among those who reject Faith; but fear ye Allah, if ye have faith (indeed). 57 Because they are devoid of understanding, they ridicule your call for prayers saying that it is a useless act. 58 Say: 'People of the Book, do you blame us for any reason other than that we believe in Allah and in what has been sent down to us, and what was sent down before us, and that most of you are evildoers' 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 in fact they enter with (an intention of) disbelief and they go out with the same. And Allah knows all what they were hiding. 61 And you will see many of them rushing towards sin and oppression, and to devour the forbidden; undoubtedly what they do is extremely evil. 62 Why do the rabbis and religious scholars not forbid them from saying what is sinful and devouring what is unlawful? How wretched is what they have been practicing. 63 The Jews have said, 'God's hand is fettered.' Fettered are their hands, and they are cursed for what they have said. Nay, but His hands are outspread; He expends how He will. And what has been sent down to thee from thy Lord will surely increase many of them in insolence and unbelief; and We have cast between them enmity and hatred, till the Day of Resurrection. As often as they light a fire for war, God will extinguish it. They hasten about the earth, to do corruption there; and God loves not the workers of corruption. 64 If the followers of the Bible would but attain to [true] faith and God-consciousness, We should indeed efface their [previous] bad deeds, and indeed bring them into gardens of bliss; 65 And if only they upheld [the law of] the Torah, the Gospel, and what has been revealed to them from their Lord, they would have consumed [provision] from above them and from beneath their feet. Among them are a moderate community, but many of them - evil is that which they do. 66