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 such a league), seeing that if they get an advantage over you, they respect not in you the ties either of kinship or of covenant? With (fair words from) their mouths they entice you, but their hearts are averse from you; and most of them are rebellious and wicked. 8 They barter away the words of God for a petty price, and obstruct (others) from His path. How evil indeed are the things they do! 9 They do not pay regard to ties of relationship nor those of covenant in the case of a believer; and these are they who go beyond the limits. 10 If they repent, perform their prayers, pay religious tax, they would be your brothers in the religion. We explain Our revelations to people of knowledge. 11 But if they break their oaths after their covenant and thrust at your religion, then fight the leaders of unbelief; they have no sacred oaths; haply they will give over. 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 will remove rage from their hearts, and will enable whomsoever He wills to repent. Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise. 15 Or think ye that ye shall be abandoned, as though Allah did not know those among you who strive with might and main, and take none for friends and protectors except Allah, His Messenger, and the (community of) Believers? But Allah is well-acquainted with (all) that ye do. 16