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 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: 'People of the Book, do you blame us for any other cause than that we believe in God, and what has been sent down to us, and what was sent down before, and that most of you are ungodly?' 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." But they have entered with disbelief [in their hearts], and they have certainly left with it. And Allah is most knowing of what they were concealing. 61 You can see many of them competing with each other in sin, hostility, and in taking usury. What they had been doing is certainly evil. 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 And the Jews say: the hand of God is fettered. Fettered be their own hands, and cursed be they for that which they have said! Aye! His both hands are wide open. He expendeth howsoever He listeth. And surely that which hath been sent down to thee from thy Lord increaseth many of them in exorbitance and infidelity. And We have cast among them enmity and spite till the Day of Judgement: so oft as they kindle the fire of war Allah extinguisheth it, and they strive after corruption in the land, and Allah approveth not the 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 If only they had stood fast by the Law, the Gospel, and all the revelation that was sent to them from their Lord, they would have enjoyed happiness from every side. There is from among them a party on the right course: but many of them follow a course that is evil. 66