O Ye who believe! Choose not for guardians such of those who received the Scripture before you, and of the disbelievers, as make a jest and sport of your religion. But keep your duty to Allah if ye are true believers. 57 Because they are devoid of understanding, they ridicule your call for prayers saying that it is a useless act. 58 Say thou: O people of the Book! what is it that ye persecute us for save that we believe in Allah and in that which hath been sent down unto us and that which hath been sent down aforetime? and most of you are transgressors. 59 Say: "Shall I inform you who will receive the worst chastisement from God? They who were condemned by God, and on whom fell His wrath, and those who were turned to apes and swine, and those who worship the powers of evil. They are in the worse gradation, and farthest away from the right path." 60 Whenever they come to you they say: 'We believe,' whereas, in fact, they come disbelieving, and go away disbelieving, and Allah knows all that they hide. 61 Thou seest many of them vying in sin and enmity, and how they consume the unlawful; evil is the thing they have been doing. 62 Why do not their priests and monks forbid them from speaking evil and devouring the forbidden? Undoubtedly what they do is extremely evil. 63 And the Jews say: the hand of God is fettered. Fettered be their own hands, and cursed be they for that which they have said! Aye! His both hands are wide open. He expendeth howsoever He listeth. And surely that which hath been sent down to thee from thy Lord increaseth many of them in exorbitance and infidelity. And We have cast among them enmity and spite till the Day of Judgement: so oft as they kindle the fire of war Allah extinguisheth it, and they strive after corruption in the land, and Allah approveth not the corrupters. 64 But had the People of the Book believed and been godfearing, We would have acquitted them of their evil deeds, and admitted them to Gardens of Bliss. 65 And if they had kept up the Taurat and the Injeel and that which was revealed to them from their Lord, they would certainly have eaten from above them and from beneath their feet there is a party of them keeping to the moderate course, and (as for) most of them, evil is that which they do 66