O believers, take not as your friends those of them, who were given the Book before you, and the unbelievers, who take your religion in mockery and as a sport -- and fear God, if you are believers -- 57 And when ye call for the prayer they make a mockery and fun thereof. This because they are a people who understand not. 58 Say, “O People given the Book(s)! What do you dislike in us – except that we believe in Allah and what is sent down to us and what was sent down before, and because most of you are disobedient?” 59 Say, "Should I tell you who will receive the worst punishment from God? Those whom God has condemned, afflicted with His anger, made apes out of them, swine and worshippers of Satan, will have the worst dwelling and will wander far away from the right path." 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 Many of them dost thou see, racing each other in sin and rancour, and their eating of things forbidden. Evil indeed are the things that they do. 62 Why do the rabbis and religious scholars not forbid them from saying what is sinful and devouring what is unlawful? How wretched is what they have been practicing. 63 And the Jews say: "God's hand is shackled!" It is their own hands that are shackled; and rejected [by God] are they because of this their assertion. Nay, but wide are His hands stretched out: He dispenses [bounty] as He wills. But all that has been bestowed from on high upon thee [O Prophet] by thy Sustainer is bound to make many of them yet more stubborn in their overweening arrogance and in their denial of the truth. And so We have cast enmity and hatred among the followers of the Bible, [to last] until Resurrection Day; every time they light the fires of war, God extinguishes them; and they labour hard to spread corruption on earth: and God does not love the spreaders of corruption. 64 And if only the People of the Scripture had believed and feared Allah, We would have removed from them their misdeeds and admitted them to Gardens of Pleasure. 65 If they had observed the Torah and the Gospel and what was revealed to them from their Lord, they would surely have been nourished from above and from below. There are some among them who are on the right course; but there are many among them who do nothing but evil. 66