O you who have believed, if you fear Allah, He will grant you a criterion and will remove from you your misdeeds and forgive you. And Allah is the possessor of great bounty. 29 AND [remember, O Prophet,] how those who were bent on denying the truth were scheming against thee, in order to restrain thee [from preaching,] or to slay thee, or to drive thee away; thus have they [always] schemed, but God brought their scheming to nought - for God is above all schemers. 30 And when Our communications are recited to them, they say: We have heard indeed; if we pleased we could say the like of it; this is nothing but the stories of the ancients. 31 They also say, "Lord, if this (Quran) is the Truth from you, shower down stones on us from the sky instead of rain or send us a painful punishment". 32 And Allah is not one to chastise them whilst thou art in their midst, nor was Allah going to chastise them while they were asking forgiveness. 33 But what prevents Allah from chastising them now when they are hindering people from the Holy Mosque, even though they are not even its true guardians. For its true guardians are none but the God-fearing, though most of them do not know that. 34 Their worship in the House of God has been no more than whistling and clapping. So they have to taste the punishment for disbelief. 35 Those who disbelieve spend their possessions on turning men away from God. They will go on spending and rue it in the end, and will be subdued. But those who remain disbelievers shall be gathered into Hell 36 so that God might separate the bad from the good, and join the bad with one another, and link them all together [within His condemnation,] and then place them in hell. They, they are the lost! 37