O you who believe! If you are careful of (your duty to) Allah, He will grant you a distinction and do away with your evils and forgive you; and Allah is the Lord of mighty grace. 29 And when the unbelievers were devising against thee, to confine thee, or slay thee, or to expel thee, and were devising, and God was devising; and God is the best of devisers. 30 Whenever Our revelations are recited to them, they say, "We have heard them. If we wished, we could produce the like. They are nothing but the fables of the ancients." 31 And lo, they would say: "O God! If this be indeed the truth from Thee, then rain down upon us stones from the skies, or inflict [some other] grievous suffering on us!" 32 But Allah was not to punish them whilst you were living in their midst. Nor would Allah punish them if they repeatedly ask forgiveness of Him. 33 And why should not Allah punish them while they stop (men) from Al-Masjid-al-Haram, and they are not its guardians? None can be its guardian except Al-Muttaqun (the pious - see V. 2:2), but most of them know not. 34 and their prayers before the Temple are nothing but whistling and clapping of hands. Taste then, [O unbelievers,] this chastisement as an outcome of your persistent denial of the truth! 35 Surely those who deny the truth spend their wealth to hinder people from the way of Allah, and will continue to so spend until their efforts become a source of intense regret for them, and then they will be vanquished, and then these deniers of the truth will be driven to Hell, 36 that God may distinguish the corrupt from the good, and place the corrupt one upon another, and so heap them up all together, and put them in Gehenna; those are the losers. 37