O you who have believed, if you fear Allah, He will grant you a criterion and will remove from you your misdeeds and forgive you. And Allah is the possessor of great bounty. 29 And recall how those who disbelieved schemed against you to take you captive, or kill you, or drive you away. They schemed and Allah did also scheme. Allah is the best of those who scheme. 30 And when Our verses are recited to them, they say, "We have heard. If we willed, we could say [something] like this. This is not but legends of the former peoples." 31 They also said, "God, if this really is the truth from You, then rain down upon us stones from heaven, or send us some other painful punishment." 32 But Allah would not punish them while you, [O Muhammad], are among them, and Allah would not punish them while they seek forgiveness. 33 What (plea) have they that Allah should not punish them, when they debar (His servants) from the Inviolable Place of Worship, though they are not its fitting guardians. Its fitting guardians are those only who keep their duty to Allah. But most of them know not. 34 Their Prayer at the House is nothing but whistling and handclapping. Taste, then, this chastisement for your denying the truth. 35 Those who are bent on denying the truth are spending their wealth in debarring others from the path of God. They will continue to spend it in this way till, in the end, this spending will become a source of intense regret for them, and then they will be overcome. And those who denied the truth will be gathered together in Hell. 36 [This is] so that Allah may distinguish the wicked from the good and place the wicked some of them upon others and heap them all together and put them into Hell. It is those who are the losers. 37