The people of the scripture will ask of you to cause a Book to be revealed to them from the heaven. They asked Moses for something greater than that for they said “show us God openly”; so the thunderbolt seized them for their evildoing. They then took to themselves the [golden] calf after clear proofs had come to them; yet We pardoned that; and We bestowed upon Moses clear authority. The verse includes two kinds of unseemly acts. The first was their asking to be shown [God] and the second was their worshiping the calf after clear signs had been made manifest to them. Their asking to be shown [God] was blameworthy because they impudently demanded it and there was no excuse for this after miracles had come to them. Therefore they were not seeking the vision for instruction nor as a means to confirm their faith nor were they brought to that [point] by intense longing. This shows a lack of manners sūÌ adab. There is an allusion [in the reference] to those who are content to have the calf as their object of worship. While submitting themselves to it how can they bear witness to the Realḍ It is said that the innermost selves of the people were untouched by deeper knowledge and they therefore clung with their intellects to a lim- ited thing maḥdūd allowing that to be their object of worship maʿbūd. And we bestowed upon Moses clear authority: a manifest proof-indeed a light that preserved him from declaring any likeness [to God] tamthīl or stripping [Him] of His attributes taʿṬīl. The clear authority is actualization taḥṣīl and declaring God incom- parable tanzīh neither stripping God of His attributes taʿṬīl nor compar- ing Him to His creation tashbīh. It is said that the clear authority is the power to hear the [divine] speech al-khiṬāb without intermediary. It is said that the clear authority belongs to this community in the future and it is their abiding in the state of meeting [God]. In the tradition of the vision [the Prophet] ﷺ said “You will not be gathered together [in one group] in seeing Him.”
