O you who believe! do not take for guardians those who take your religion for a mockery and a joke, from among those who were given the Book before you and the unbelievers; and be careful of (your duty to) Allah if you are believers. 57 And when you call to prayer, they mock and make fun of it; this is because they are people without any sense. 58 Say, "People of the Book! Do you resent us only because we believe in God and in what has been revealed to us and to others before, and because most of you are disobedient?" 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 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 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 The Jews say: 'The Hand of Allah is fettered. It is their own hands which are fettered, and they stand cursed for the evil they have uttered. No! His Hands are outspread; He spends as He wills. Surely the message that has been revealed to you from your Lord has increased many of them in their in-surgence and unbelief, and so We have cast enmity and spite among them until the Day of Resurrection. And as often as they kindle the fire of war, Allah extinguishes it; and they go about trying to spread mischief on earth, whereas Allah does not love those who spread mischief. 64 If the followers of the Bible would but attain to [true] faith and God-consciousness, We should indeed efface their [previous] bad deeds, and indeed bring them into gardens of bliss; 65 and if they would but truly observe the Torah and the Gospel and all [the revelation] that has been bestowed from on high upon them by their Sustainer, they would indeed partake of all the blessings of heaven and earth. Some of them do pursue a right course; but as for most of them - vile indeed is what they do! 66