Believers! Do not seek the friendship of those who were given the Book before you or the disbelievers who ridicule your religion and make a jest of it. Have fear of God, if you are true believers. 57 When you call to prayer, they treat it as a jest and a pastime. That is because they are a people who have no understanding. 58 Say: O followers of the Book! do you find fault with us (for aught) except that we believe in Allah and in what has been revealed to us and what was revealed before, and that 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 When they come unto you (Muslims), they say: We believe; but they came in unbelief and they went out in the same; and Allah knoweth best what they were hiding. 61 And thou shalt see many of them hastening toward sin and transgression and their devouring of the forbidden. Vile indeed is that which they have been doing! 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 The Jews say: 'The Hand of Allah is fettered. It is their own hands which are fettered, and they stand cursed for the evil they have uttered. No! His Hands are outspread; He spends as He wills. Surely the message that has been revealed to you from your Lord has increased many of them in their in-surgence and unbelief, and so We have cast enmity and spite among them until the Day of Resurrection. And as often as they kindle the fire of war, Allah extinguishes it; and they go about trying to spread mischief on earth, whereas Allah does not love those who spread mischief. 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 that which was revealed unto them from their Lord, they would surely have been nourished from above them and from beneath their feet. Among them there are people who are moderate, but many of them are of evil conduct. 66