O believers, do not make friends with those who mock and make a sport of your faith, who were given the Book before you, and with unbelievers; and fear God if you truly believe; 57 When ye proclaim your call to prayer they take it (but) as mockery and sport; that is because they are a people without understanding. 58 Say to them: 'People of the Book! Do you hate us for anything else except that we believe in Allah, and in the teaching which has been revealed to us and in the teaching which was revealed before? Indeed most of you are transgressors.' 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 came to you they said: 'We are believers' Indeed, they have entered with disbelief, and so they have departed with it; Allah knows best what they conceal. 61 You see many among them vie with one another in sin and transgression and practice what is unlawful. It is vile indeed what they have been doing! 62 Why do not the learned men and the doctors of law prohibit them from their speaking of what is sinful and their eating of what is unlawfully acquired? Certainly evil is that which they work. 63 The Jews say: Allah's hand is fettered. Their hands are fettered and they are accursed for saying so. Nay, but both His hands are spread out wide in bounty. He bestoweth as He will. That which hath been revealed unto thee from thy Lord is certain to increase the contumacy and disbelief of many of them, and We have cast among them enmity and hatred till the Day of Resurrection. As often as they light a fire for war, Allah extinguisheth it. Their effort is for corruption in the land, and Allah loveth not corrupters. 64 If the People given the Book(s) had accepted faith and been pious, We would have certainly redeemed them of their sins and would have certainly taken them into serene Gardens. 65 And if they had followed the teachings of the Torah and the Gospel, and what has been sent down to them by their Lord, they would surely have enjoyed (blessings) from the heavens above and the earth below their feet. 66