YOU ARE indeed the best community that has ever been brought forth for [the good of] mankind: you enjoin the doing of what is right and forbid the doing of what is wrong, and you believe in God. Now if the followers of earlier revelation had attained to [this kind of] faith, it would have been for their own good; [but only few] among them are believers, while most of them are iniquitous: 110 They can do you very little harm; if they come out to fight you, they will show you their backs; then they shall not be helped -- 111 Degraded they shall live wheresoever they be unless they make an alliance with God and alliance with men, for they have incurred the anger of God, and misery overhangs them. That is because they denied the signs of God and killed the prophets unjustly, and rebelled, and went beyond the limit. 112 ۞ Yet all are not alike: among the People of the Book there are upright people who recite the messages of Allah in the watches of the night and prostrate themselves in worship. 113 who believe in God and the Last Day, who enjoin justice and forbid evil and vie with each other in good works. These are righteous men 114 And whatsoever good you do, you shall not be denied the just reward of it; and God knows the godfearing. 115 The wealth and the children of the unbelievers can never make them independent of God. They are the dwellers of hell wherein they will live forever. 116 The likeness of that they expend in this present life is as the likeness of a freezing blast that smites the tillage of a people who wronged themselves, and it destroyed that; God wronged them not, but themselves they wronged. 117 O ye who believe! Take not for intimates others than your own folk, who would spare no pains to ruin you; they love to hamper you. Hatred is revealed by (the utterance of) their mouths, but that which their breasts hide is greater. We have made plain for you the revelations if ye will understand. 118 Ah! ye are those who love them, but they love you not,- though ye believe in the whole of the Book. When they meet you, they say, "We believe": But when they are alone, they bite off the very tips of their fingers at you in their rage. Say: "Perish in your rage; Allah knoweth well all the secrets of the heart." 119 They hate to see your success and rejoice if any misfortune befalls you. If you will be patient and pious, their plots can cause no harm to you. God has control over all their actions. 120