Believers! Do not take for your allies those who make a mockery and sport of your faith, be they those given the Book before you or other unbelievers. Fear Allah if you indeed believe. 57 (Nor make friends with) those who, when you call (the faithful) to prayer, make mock of it and jest, because they do not understand. 58 Say to them: "O people of the Book, what reason have you for disliking us other than that we believe in God and what has been sent down to us, and was sent down before, and because most of you are disobedient?" 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 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 You see many of them race with one another in sin and transgression and devour the unlawful. Evil is what they do. 62 Why do not their priests and monks forbid them from speaking evil and devouring the forbidden? Undoubtedly what they do is extremely evil. 63 The Jews say: 'The Hand of Allah is fettered. It is their own hands which are fettered, and they stand cursed for the evil they have uttered. No! His Hands are outspread; He spends as He wills. Surely the message that has been revealed to you from your Lord has increased many of them in their in-surgence and unbelief, and so We have cast enmity and spite among them until the Day of Resurrection. And as often as they kindle the fire of war, Allah extinguishes it; and they go about trying to spread mischief on earth, whereas Allah does not love those who spread mischief. 64 If the People of the Book had believed and kept from evil, We would pardon them their sins and admit them to the Gardens of Delight. 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