“O you groups of jinns and men! Did not the Noble Messengers amongst you come to you reciting My verses and warning you of confronting this day?” They will say, “We testify against ourselves” – and the worldly life deceived them and they will testify against themselves that they were disbelievers. 130 This is because your Lord would not destroy the (populations of) towns for their wrong-doing (i.e. associating others in worship along with Allah) while their people were unaware (so the Messengers were sent). 131 For all there will be degrees in accordance with that which they did, and thy Lord is not unaware of that which they do. 132 Your Lord is all-sufficient and full of benevolence. He can take you away if He please, and make whom He will succeed you, as He had raised you from the progeny of others. 133 The thing you are promised, that will surely come; you cannot frustrate it. 134 Say (O Muhammad): O my people! Work according to your power. Lo! I too am working. Thus ye will come to know for which of us will be the happy sequel. Lo! the wrong-doers will not be successful. 135 They appoint to God, of the tillage and cattle that He multiplied, a portion, saying, 'This is for God' -- so they assert -- 'and this is for our associates.' So what is for their associates reaches not God; and what is for God reaches their associates. Evil is their judgment! 136 And even so their associate-gods have made fair seeming unto many of the associaters the slaying of their offspring, so that they may cause them to perish and that they may confound unto them their religion. And had Allah so willed, they would not have done it. Wherefore let thou alone them and that which they fabricate. 137 And they say: "Such-and-such cattle and fruits of the field are sacred; none may eat thereof save those whom we will [to do so]" - so they [falsely] claim; and [they declare that] it is forbidden to burden the backs of certain kinds of cattle; and there are cattle over which they do not pronounce God's name - falsely attributing [the origin of these customs] to Him. [But] He will requite them for all their false imagery. 138 And they say, "What is in the bellies of these animals is exclusively for our males and forbidden to our females. But if it is [born] dead, then all of them have shares therein." He will punish them for their description. Indeed, He is Wise and Knowing. 139 Those who foolishly and ignorantly murdered their children, ascribed falsehood to God and made unlawful what He had given to them for their sustenance, have certainly lost much. They had gone far away from the right guidance. 140