Believers, if you fear Allah, He will give you a criteria and cleanse you of your sins and forgive you. Allah is the Owner of great bounty. 29 And recall what time those who disbelieved were plotting against thee to confine thee or to slay thee or to drive thee forth: they were plotting and Allah was plotting, and Allah is the Best of plotters. 30 And when Our verses are recited to them they say, “Yes, we have heard – if we wanted we could also say something like this – these are nothing but stories of former people!” 31 And when they said: O Allah! If this be indeed the truth from Thee, then rain down stones on us or bring on us some painful doom! 32 But Allah was not to punish them whilst you were living in their midst. Nor would Allah punish them if they repeatedly ask forgiveness of Him. 33 And why should not Allah punish them while they stop (men) from Al-Masjid-al-Haram, and they are not its guardians? None can be its guardian except Al-Muttaqun (the pious - see V. 2:2), but most of them know not. 34 And their prayer at the House was not except whistling and handclapping. So taste the punishment for what you disbelieved. 35 Those who are bent on denying the truth are spending their wealth in debarring others from the path of God. They will continue to spend it in this way till, in the end, this spending will become a source of intense regret for them, and then they will be overcome. And those who denied the truth will be gathered together in Hell. 36 That God may separate the bad from the good, and link the wicked together and cast them into Hell. These are verily the people who will lose. 37