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 you call them to prayer, they treat it as a jest and a diversion. This is because they are devoid of understanding. 58 Say to them: 'People of the Book! Do you hate us for anything else except that we believe in Allah, and in the teaching which has been revealed to us and in the teaching which was revealed before? Indeed most of you are transgressors.' 59 Say: "Shall I tell you who, in the sight of God, deserves a yet worse retribution than these? They whom God has rejected and whom He has condemned, and whom He has turned into apes and swine because they worshipped the powers of evil: these are yet worse in station, and farther astray from the right path [than the mockers]." 60 And when they come to you they say: we believe; whereas surely with infidelity they entered and surely with it they went forth. And Allah is Knower of that which they have been 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 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 And the Jews say: The hand of Allah is tied up! Their hands shall be shackled and they shall be cursed for what they say. Nay, both His hands are spread out, He expends as He pleases; and what has been revealed to you from your Lord will certainly make many of them increase in inordinacy and unbelief; and We have put enmity and hatred among them till the day of resurrection; whenever they kindle a fire for war Allah puts it out, and they strive to make mischief in the land; and Allah does not love the mischief-makers. 64 But had the People of the Book believed and been godfearing, We would have acquitted them of their evil deeds, and admitted them to Gardens of Bliss. 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