Believers! Do not seek the friendship of those who were given the Book before you or the disbelievers who ridicule your religion and make a jest of it. Have fear of God, if you are true believers. 57 When you call them to prayer, they treat it as a jest and a diversion. This is because they are devoid of understanding. 58 Say to them: 'People of the Book! Do you hate us for anything else except that we believe in Allah, and in the teaching which has been revealed to us and in the teaching which was revealed before? Indeed most of you are transgressors.' 59 Say, "Shall I tell you who will receive a worse reward from God? Those whom God has rejected and with whom He has been angry. They were condemned as apes and swine and those who worship the evil. These are in the worst plight and farthest astray from the right path." 60 And when they come to you they say: we believe; whereas surely with infidelity they entered and surely with it they went forth. And Allah is Knower of that which they have been concealing. 61 And thou canst see many of them vie with one another in sinning and tyrannical conduct and in their swallowing of all that is evil. 62 Why do not their priests and monks forbid them from speaking evil and devouring the forbidden? Undoubtedly what they do is extremely evil. 63 And the Jews say, "The hand of Allah is chained." Chained are their hands, and cursed are they for what they say. Rather, both His hands are extended; He spends however He wills. And that which has been revealed to you from your Lord will surely increase many of them in transgression and disbelief. And We have cast among them animosity and hatred until the Day of Resurrection. Every time they kindled the fire of war [against you], Allah extinguished it. And they strive throughout the land [causing] corruption, and Allah does not like corrupters. 64 If the people of the Book had believed and feared, We would surely have absolved them of their sins, and admitted them to gardens of delight. 65 Had they followed the Laws of the Old and New Testaments and what was revealed to them from their Lord, they would have received Our bounties from above and below in abundance. Some of them are modest people, but many of them commit the worst sins. 66