O People who Believe! Those who have made your religion a mockery and a sport, and those who received the Book before you, and the disbelievers – do not befriend any of them; and keep fearing Allah, if you have faith. 57 And when you call to prayer, they mock and make fun of it; this is because they are people without any sense. 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 point out to you something much worse than this, (as judged) by the treatment it received from Allah? those who incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath, those of whom some He transformed into apes and swine, those who worshipped evil;- these are (many times) worse in rank, and far more astray from the even path!" 60 When they come to you (believers), they say, "We have accepted your faith." However, they entered into your faith as unbelievers and left it as unbelievers. God knows best what they were hiding. 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 the rabbis and the religious learned men forbid them from uttering sinful words and from eating illegal things. Evil indeed is that which they have been performing. 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 Had the People of the Book accepted the faith and observed piety, certainly, We would have redeemed their bad deeds and admitted them into a blissful Paradise. 65 Had they performed the Torah and the Gospel, and what was sent down to them from their Lord, they would have eaten both what was above them, and what was beneath their feet. Some of them are a just nation; but many of them -- evil are the things they do. 66