O you who have attained to faith! Do not take for your friends such as mock at your faith and make a jest of it - be they from among those who have been vouchsafed revelation before your time, or [from among] those who deny the truth [of revelation as such] - but remain conscious of God, if you are [truly] believers: 57 (Nor make friends with) those who, when you call (the faithful) to prayer, make mock of it and jest, because they do not understand. 58 Say: "O followers of earlier revelation! Do you find fault with us for no other reason than that we believe in God [alone,] and in that which He has bestowed from on high upon us as well as that which He has bestowed aforetime? - or [is it only] because most of you are iniquitous?" 59 Say: "Shall I tell you who, in the sight of God, deserves a yet worse retribution than these? They whom God has rejected and whom He has condemned, and whom He has turned into apes and swine because they worshipped the powers of evil: these are yet worse in station, and farther astray from the right path [than the mockers]." 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 You see many among them vie with one another in sin and transgression and practice what is unlawful. It is vile indeed what they have been doing! 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 The Jews say, "The hand of God is tied up." May their own hands be tied up and may they be cursed for what they say. No indeed! His hands are both outstretched: He bestows as He will. What is revealed to you from your Lord will surely increase in most of them their obstinate rebellion and denial of truth; and We have sown among them enmity and hatred till the Day of Resurrection. Whenever they kindle the fire of war, God puts it out. They spread evil in the land, but God does not love the evil-doers. 64 If the followers of the Bible would but attain to [true] faith and God-consciousness, We should indeed efface their [previous] bad deeds, and indeed bring them into gardens of bliss; 65 And if they had kept up the Taurat and the Injeel and that which was revealed to them from their Lord, they would certainly have eaten from above them and from beneath their feet there is a party of them keeping to the moderate course, and (as for) most of them, evil is that which they do 66