۞ O YOU who have attained to faith! Be ever steadfast in upholding equity, bearing witness to the truth for the sake of God, even though it be against your own selves or your parents and kinsfolk. Whether the person concerned be rich or poor, God's claim takes precedence over [the claims of] either of them. Do not, then, follow your own desires, lest you swerve from justice: for if you distort [the truth,] behold, God is indeed aware of all that you do! 135 Believers, believe in God and His Messenger and in the Scripture He sent down to His Messenger, as well as what He sent down before. He who denies God, His angels, His Scriptures, His messengers and the Last Day has surely gone far astray. 136 God will not forgive or guide to the right path those who first believe, then disbelieve, again believe and disbelieve, and then increase their disbelief. 137 Announce thou to such hypocrites that grievous suffering awaits them. 138 Do those who take unbelievers as their friends in preference to the faithful seek power from them? But all power belongs to God. 139 He has sent down upon you in the Book: 'When you hear God's signs being disbelieved and made mock of, do not sit with them until they plunge into some other talk, or else you will surely be like to them.' God will gather the hypocrites and the unbelievers all in Gehenna. 140 Those who wait to see what befalls you, say in ease success comes to you from God: "Were we not with you?" But if fortune favours the infidels, they say: "Did we not overpower you, and yet protected you against the believers?" But God will judge between you on the Day of Resurrection; and God will never give the unbelievers a way over the faithful. 141