۞ O YOU who have attained to faith! Be ever steadfast in upholding equity, bearing witness to the truth for the sake of God, even though it be against your own selves or your parents and kinsfolk. Whether the person concerned be rich or poor, God's claim takes precedence over [the claims of] either of them. Do not, then, follow your own desires, lest you swerve from justice: for if you distort [the truth,] behold, God is indeed aware of all that you do! 135 O believers, believe in God and His Messenger and the Book He has sent down on His Messenger and the Book which He sent down before. Whoso disbelieves in God and His angels and His Books, and His Messengers, and the Last Day, has surely gone astray into far error. 136 Lo! those who believe, then disbelieve and then (again) believe, then disbelieve, and then increase in disbelief, Allah will never pardon them, nor will He guide them unto a way. 137 Give thou good tidings to the hypocrites that for them awaits a painful chastisement. 138 Do those who take unbelievers as their friends in preference to the faithful seek power from them? But all power belongs to God. 139 And indeed Allah has sent down to you in the Book that whenever you hear the signs of Allah being rejected or being made fun of, do not sit with those people, until they engage in some other conversation; or else you too are like them; undoubtedly Allah will gather the hypocrites and the disbelievers, all together, into hell. 140 (The hypocrites) wait and watch. If God grants you victory, they say, "Did we not help you?" If the unbelievers are victorious, they say, "Did we not encourage you not to surrender to the believers and did we not protect you from them?" God will judge among you on the Day of Judgment. He will never help the disbelievers against the believers. 141