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 (Muhammad), say to the People of the Book, "Do you take revenge on us because of our belief in God and what He has revealed to us and to others before us? Most of you are evil-doers". 59 Say: 'Shall I tell you who will receive a worse recompense from Allah than that? Those whom Allah has cursed and with whom He is angry, and made some of them apes and swine, and those who worship the devil. The place of these is worse, and they have strayed further from the Right Path' 60 And when they come to you, they say: We believe; and indeed they come in with unbelief and indeed they go forth with it; and Allah knows best what they concealed. 61 You will see many of them hastening towards sin and transgression and devouring unlawful earnings. Indeed what they do is evil. 62 Why do their rabbis and scholars not forbid them to utter sinful words or to consume what is unlawful? Their actions are indeed vile. 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 If the People of the Book had believed and kept from evil, We would pardon them their sins and admit them to the Gardens of Delight. 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