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 treaty for the others) when, if they have the upper hand of you, they regard not pact nor honour in respect of you? They satisfy you with their mouths the while their hearts refuse. And most of them are wrongdoers. 8 They exchanged the verses of Allah for an abject price, therefore prevented from His way; indeed what they do is extremely evil. 9 respecting no tie and no protective obligation with regard to a believer; and it is they, they who transgress the bounds of what is right! 10 But if they repent and establish Prayer and give Zakah they are your brothers in faith. Thus do We expound Our revelations to those who know. 11 But if they violate their oaths after their covenant, and attack your religion with disapproval and criticism then fight (you) the leaders of disbelief (chiefs of Quraish - pagans of Makkah) - for surely their oaths are nothing to them - so that they may stop (evil actions). 12 Will you not fight a people who broke their oaths and purposed to expel the Messenger, beginning the first time against you? Are you afraid of them? You would do better to be afraid of God, if you are believers. 13 Fight them so that God may punish them at your hands, and put them to shame, and help you against them, and heal the wounds of the hearts of believers, 14 and will remove rage from their hearts, and will enable whomsoever He wills to repent. Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise. 15 Did you suppose that you would be left before Allah has known those of you who fought and did not take a confidant other than Allah, His Messenger, and the believers? Allah is Aware of what you do. 16