HOW COULD they who ascribe divinity to aught beside God be granted a covenant by God and His Apostle, unless it be those [of them] with whom you [O believers] have made a covenant in the vicinity of the Inviolable House of Worship? [As for the latter,] so long as they remain true to you, be true to them: for, verily, God loves those who are conscious of Him. 7 How can there be any covenant with the other polytheists for were they to prevail against you, they will respect neither kinship nor agreement. They seek to please you with their tongues while their hearts are averse to you, and most of them are wicked. 8 They have bartered the revelations of Allah for a small price, so they keep back from His path. Verily vile is that which they have been working. 9 In a Believer they respect not the ties either of kinship or of covenant! It is they who have transgressed all bounds. 10 Yet if they repent, and take to prayer, and render the purifying dues, they become your brethren in faith: and clearly do We spell out these messages unto people of [innate] knowledge! 11 And if they break their oaths after their treaty and defame your religion, then fight the leaders of disbelief, for indeed, there are no oaths [sacred] to them; [fight them that] they might cease. 12 Will ye not fight a people who have violated their oaths and resolved the expulsion of the apostle and who began against you for the first time? Fear ye them? Allah is more worthy that ye should fear Him, if ye are believers. 13 Fight them, and God will chastise them at your hands and degrade them, and He will help you against them, and bring healing to the breasts of a people who believe, 14 and appease their anger. God forgives whomever He wants and He is All-knowing and All-wise. 15 Or did you suppose you would be left in peace, and God knows not as yet those of you who have struggled, and taken not -- apart from God and His Messenger and the believers -- any intimate? God is aware of what you do. 16