Believers, do not take as guides those who were given the Book before you who have made of your religion a jest and a pastime, nor the unbelievers. Have fear of Allah, if you are believers. 57 Because they are devoid of understanding, they ridicule your call for prayers saying that it is a useless act. 58 (Muhammad), say to the People of the Book, "Do you take revenge on us because of our belief in God and what He has revealed to us and to others before us? Most of you are evil-doers". 59 Say thou: shall I declare unto you something worse as a way with Allah than that? Whomsoever Allah hath accursed and is angered with, and of whom some He hath made apes and swine and slaves of the devil - those are worst in abode and furthest astray from the level way. 60 When they come unto you (Muslims), they say: We believe; but they came in unbelief and they went out in the same; and Allah knoweth best what they were hiding. 61 And you will see many of them striving with one another to hasten in sin and exceeding the limits, and their eating of what is unlawfully acquired; certainly evil is that which they do. 62 Why do not the learned men and the doctors of law prohibit them from their speaking of what is sinful and their eating of what is unlawfully acquired? Certainly evil is that which they work. 63 The Jews have said, 'God's hand is fettered.' Fettered are their hands, and they are cursed for what they have said. Nay, but His hands are outspread; He expends how He will. And what has been sent down to thee from thy Lord will surely increase many of them in insolence and unbelief; and We have cast between them enmity and hatred, till the Day of Resurrection. As often as they light a fire for war, God will extinguish it. They hasten about the earth, to do corruption there; and God loves not the workers of corruption. 64 If the followers of the Bible would but attain to [true] faith and God-consciousness, We should indeed efface their [previous] bad deeds, and indeed bring them into gardens of bliss; 65 And if they had kept up the Taurat and the Injeel and that which was revealed to them from their Lord, they would certainly have eaten from above them and from beneath their feet there is a party of them keeping to the moderate course, and (as for) most of them, evil is that which they do 66