O ye who believe! take not for friends and protectors those who take your religion for a mockery or sport,- whether among those who received the Scripture before you, or among those who reject Faith; but fear ye Allah, if ye have faith (indeed). 57 When ye proclaim your call to prayer they take it (but) as mockery and sport; that is because they are a people without understanding. 58 Say: "O people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians)! Do you criticize us for no other reason than that we believe in Allah, and in (the revelation) which has been sent down to us and in that which has been sent down before (us), and that most of you are Fasiqun [rebellious and disobedient (to Allah)]?" 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 unto you (Muslims), they say: We believe; but they came in unbelief and they went out in the same; and Allah knoweth best what they were hiding. 61 You see many of them race with one another in sin and transgression and devour the unlawful. Evil is what they do. 62 Why do not their men of God and their rabbis forbid them to make sinful assertions and to swallow all that is evil? Vile indeed is what they contrive! 63 And the Jews say: the hand of God is fettered. Fettered be their own hands, and cursed be they for that which they have said! Aye! His both hands are wide open. He expendeth howsoever He listeth. And surely that which hath been sent down to thee from thy Lord increaseth many of them in exorbitance and infidelity. And We have cast among them enmity and spite till the Day of Judgement: so oft as they kindle the fire of war Allah extinguisheth it, and they strive after corruption in the land, and Allah approveth not the corrupters. 64 And if only the People of the Scripture had believed and feared Allah, We would have removed from them their misdeeds and admitted them to Gardens of Pleasure. 65 And if only they upheld [the law of] the Torah, the Gospel, and what has been revealed to them from their Lord, they would have consumed [provision] from above them and from beneath their feet. Among them are a moderate community, but many of them - evil is that which they do. 66