take your religion for a jest or a sport, from amongst those who have been given the Book before and the misbelievers; but fear God if ye be believers. Nor those who, when ye call to prayer, take it for a jest and a sport; that is because they are a people who do not understand.
Say, ‘O people of the Book! do ye disavow us, for aught but that we believe in God, and what was revealed to us before, and for that most of you are evildoers ?’ :
[65] Say, ‘Can I declare unto you something worse than retribution from God?’ Whomsoever God has cursed and been wroth with—and he has made of them apes and swine—and who worship Taghut, they are in a worse plight and are more erring from the level path. When they come to you they say, ‘We believe;’ but they entered in with unbelief, and they went out therewith, and God knows best what they did hide.
Thou wilt see many of them vieing in sin and enmity, and in eating unlawful things,—evil is it that they have done. The masters and their doctors prohibit them from speaking sin and eating unlawful things,—evil is what they have performed.
The Jews say, ‘God's hand is fettered;’ their hands are fettered and they are cursed for what they said; nay! His hands are outspread, He expends how He pleases! and that which has been sent down to thee from thy Lord will surely increase many of them in their rebellion and misbelief, for we have cast amongst them enmity and hatred till the resurrection day. Whenever they light a fire[1] for war,
- ↑ The ancient Arabs always lit a beacon-fire as a proclamation of war, or a notice of the approach of an enemy.
