YOU ARE indeed the best community that has ever been brought forth for [the good of] mankind: you enjoin the doing of what is right and forbid the doing of what is wrong, and you believe in God. Now if the followers of earlier revelation had attained to [this kind of] faith, it would have been for their own good; [but only few] among them are believers, while most of them are iniquitous: 110 They will not be able to harm you except for a little hurt, and if they fight against you they will turn their backs (in flight), and then they will not be succoured. 111 Degraded they shall live wheresoever they be unless they make an alliance with God and alliance with men, for they have incurred the anger of God, and misery overhangs them. That is because they denied the signs of God and killed the prophets unjustly, and rebelled, and went beyond the limit. 112 ۞ Yet all of them are not alike. Among the people of the Book is a section upright, who recite the scriptures in the hours of the night and bow in adoration and pray, 113 They believe in Allah and in the Last Day and enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong, and hasten to excel each other in doing good. These are among the righteous. 114 and they will not be denied [the reward] for whatever good deeds they do: God knows the righteous. 115 Indeed those who disbelieve – neither their wealth nor their offspring will help save them in the least, from Allah; and they are the people of fire; remaining in it forever. 116 What they spend in the life of this world is like a frosty wind which smites and destroys the crops of a people who had wronged themselves. God did not wrong them, they wronged themselves. 117 O ye who believe! Take not into your intimacy those outside your ranks: They will not fail to corrupt you. They only desire your ruin: Rank hatred has already appeared from their mouths: What their hearts conceal is far worse. We have made plain to you the Signs, if ye have wisdom. 118 Ha, there you are; you love them, and they love you not; you believe in the Book, all of it, and when they meet you they say, 'We believe,' but when they go privily, they bite at you their fingers, enraged. Say: 'Die in your rage; God knows the thoughts in the breasts.' 119 If good touches you, it distresses them; but if harm strikes you, they rejoice at it. And if you are patient and fear Allah, their plot will not harm you at all. Indeed, Allah is encompassing of what they do. 120