7. Al-A'raaf

And remember O Children of Israel, when I saved you from the humiliation of Pharaoh and his people, who were making you suffer greatly, killing your sons and letting your women live to serve them. Being saved from Pharaoh and his people was a great test from your Lord, to see if you would be thankful.

When Moses came to meet his Lord for the appointment he had been assigned, which was a full forty nights, and his Lord spoke to him giving him instructions and prohibitions and so on, Moses desired to see his Lord, so he asked to see Him. Allah the Exalted replied: 'You will not see Me in the life of this world, because you will not be able to endure that, but look instead at the mountain when I reveal Myself to it, if it remains in its place and is not affected then You will be able to see Me; but if it becomes flattened, then you will not be able to see Me in the life of this world.' Then when Allah revealed Himself to the mountain it crumbled to dust, and Moses fell down unconscious. When he recovered from his unconsciousness, he said: 'I declare Your Perfection O Lord, and that You are far above any deficiency being ascribed to You, and I turn to You asking for forgiveness for having asked to see You in this world, and I am the first of my people to believe.'

Allah told Moses: 'O Moses, I have chosen you and preferred you over other people through the message which I have sent you with, and by My speaking to you directly. Take then the great honour which I have given you, and be among those who are thankful to Allah for such a great gift.'

Allah wrote for Moses in the Tablets everything that the Israelites would need for their spiritual and worldly affairs – instruction for those who would be instructed and an explanation of laws that needed explanation. He told Moses to take hold of them firmly and with determination, and to instruct his people, the Israelites, to take hold of the most excellent instructions that they contained, with the promise of the greatest reward for doing what they were instructed in the most perfect way, and to do so with patience and forgiveness. Allah told Moses that He would show them the destiny of those who went against His commands and who disobeyed Him, and the ruin and loss that they would receive as a result.

Those who are unjustly proud towards the servants of Allah and the truth will be turned away by Allah from thinking about His signs on the horizons and within themselves and from understanding His verses even if they see every sign, they will not believe in them, because of their rejection of these signs and their turning away from them, and for opposing Allah and His Messenger. If they see the path of truth which leads to the pleasure of Allah, they do not follow it, and do not like it; and if they see the way of misguidance and error leading to Allah’s displeasure, they follow it. This only happens to them because they rejected the great signs and verses of Allah proving the truth of what the messengers came with, and did not pay any attention to them.

Those who rejected the signs of Allah proving the truth of the messengers, and denied that they would meet with Allah on the Day of Judgement, their good actions will come to nothing, because they were not based on faith; and they will be repaid for their disbelief in Allah and for associating partners with Allah – the repayment for which is living eternally in the fire of Hell.

After Moses had gone to meet with his Lord, his people took to worshipping a statue of a calf made from their ornaments, not possessing any soul, but which made a sound. Did they not know that this calf could not speak to them or guide them to any good way, material or spiritual, and that it could not bring anything of benefit to them or remove anything harmful from them? But they took to worshipping it and wronged themselves by doing so.

When they regretted their actions and did not know how to make-up for their wrongdoing, realising that they had gone astray from the straight path by worshipping the calf besides to Allah, they said: 'If our Lord does not have mercy on us, by enabling us to do as He instructed, and if He does not forgive us for having worshipped the calf, then we would certainly be among the losers in the life of this world and in the Afterlife.'

Moses returned to his people from his meeting with His Lord full of anger and sadness upon finding them worshipping the calf. He said: 'What an evil condition you have fallen into after me O people, which leads only to ruin and misery! Were you tired of waiting for the appointed time of your Lord assigned for me – the forty nights – so you started to worship the calf!' Moses threw the Tablets down because of his extreme anger and sadness, and took his brother Aaron by the head and beard and dragged him, because he had been with them and had not been able to stop them from worshipping the calf. Aaron said to his brother Moses: 'O son of my mother, indeed the people considered me to be weak, not respecting me, and they had almost killed me; so do not punish me in a way that would make my enemies rejoice, and do not to include me out of your anger among the people who had done wrong by worshipping other than Allah.'