O believers, if you fear God, He will assign you a salvation, and acquit you of your evil deeds, and forgive you; and God is of bounty abounding. 29 Remember how those who bent on denying the truth plotted against you to imprison you or kill you or expel you: they schemed -- but God also schemed. God is the best of schemers. 30 And when Our revelations are rehearsed unto them, they say: we have heard; we could if we willed, surely say something the like thereof; naught is this but fables of the ancients. 31 And [remember] when they said, "O Allah, if this should be the truth from You, then rain down upon us stones from the sky or bring us a painful punishment." 32 But Allah would not punish them while thou wast with them, nor will He punish them while they seek forgiveness. 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 before the House is nothing but whistling and clapping of hands; taste then the chastisement, for you disbelieved. 35 Surely those who deny the truth spend their wealth to hinder people from the way of Allah, and will continue to so spend until their efforts become a source of intense regret for them, and then they will be vanquished, and then these deniers of the truth will be driven to Hell, 36 so that Allah may separate the bad from the good, and join together all those who are bad into a pile one upon another, and cast them into Hell. They, it is they who are the losers. 37