They do blaspheme who say: "Allah is Christ the son of Mary." But said Christ: "O Children of Israel! worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord." Whoever joins other gods with Allah,- Allah will forbid him the garden, and the Fire will be his abode. There will for the wrong-doers be no one to help. Al-Ma'idah 5:72 ⧉
Tafsir:
The bearers of divine scriptures in later periods developed the belief that they were the special people of God and that whatever they did, they would not have to face any reckoning. In the teachings of God, there are clear statements against such beliefs, but they became blind and deaf to them. They built around themselves such barriers of self-made beliefs and fictitious stories that God’s warnings went unnoticed. The history of the Jews shows that whenever a community bearing the scriptures was made to suffer subjugation by its ‘enemies’, this was designed as a testing period for it. Light punishment administered to the community was meant to awaken its moral sense. If feelings of devotion to God were then aroused in its members, there was a cessation of the punishment, but if this did not happen, God rejected them, cast them away and did not turn His attention towards them ever again. Almighty God granted Jesus the power to perform extraordinary miracles. This was done so that people should recognize him as a prophet and have faith in him. But it turned out otherwise. Jesus had been sent by God purely for the guidance of the people, but looking to his miracles, the Christians developed the belief that he was God and that God was incarnate in him. The Jews for their part ignored him, relegating him to the position of a magician and conjurer. While the latter group rejected him, the former group was inspired by him to establish polytheistic beliefs.