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 And when you call for Prayer, they take it for a mockery and sport. That is because they are a people who do not understand. 58 Say, "O People of the Scripture, do you resent us except [for the fact] that we have believed in Allah and what was revealed to us and what was revealed before and because most of you are defiantly 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 to you, they say, 'We believe'; but they have entered in unbelief, and so they have departed in it; God knows very well what they were hiding. 61 You can see many of them competing with each other in sin, hostility, and in taking usury. What they had been doing is certainly evil. 62 Why do their rabbis and scholars not forbid them to utter sinful words or to consume what is unlawful? Their actions are indeed vile. 63 The Jews say: "Bound are the hands of God." Tied be their own hands, and damned may they be for saying what they say! In fact, both His hands are open wide: He spends of His bounty in any way He please. But what your Lord has revealed to you will only increase their rebellion and unbelief. So We have caused enmity and hatred among them (which will last) till the Day of Resurrection. As often as they ignite the fires of war they are extinguished by God. Yet they rush around to spread corruption in the land; but God does not love those who are corrupt. 64 If the people of the Book had believed and feared, We would surely have absolved them of their sins, and admitted them to gardens of delight. 65 And had they established the Taurat and the Injil and that which hath now been sent down unto them from their Lord, they would have devoured from above them and from beneath them. Among them is a community right-doing; but many of them - vile is that which they work! 66