And if you could see, it may be addressed to the Messenger of Allah, blessings and peace be upon him, and there are two aspects: that it is meant as a wish, as if he said: I wish you could see, like his saying, blessings and peace be upon him, to Al-Mughira: "If you looked at her". This is part of a narration reported by Al-Tirmidhi, Al-Nasa'i, Ibn Majah, Ibn Abi Shaybah, Ibn Hibban, Al-Hakim, Ahmad, Al-Bazzar, and others from the narration of Al-Mughira that he proposed to a woman and the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him, said to me: "Look at her, for it is more likely that harmony will be established between you two." Abu Ubaid narrated it in Al-Gharib with the wording that he said to Al-Mughira when he proposed to a woman: "If you looked at her," the narration. And the wish for the Messenger of Allah, blessings and peace be upon him, is like the hope for him in 'Perhaps they will be guided' because he endured their bitterness and their enmity and harm. So Allah made him wish to see them in that dreadful state of shyness, disgrace, and sorrow to gloat over them. And the conditional 'if' may have had its response omitted, which is: you would have seen a dreadful matter. Or: you would have seen the worst state you could see. It is also possible that it is addressed to everyone, as you say: So-and-so is mean; if you honor him, he will dishonor you, and if you do good to him, he will do harm to you. You do not mean a specific addressee, as if you said: if he honors and if he does good to him. And 'if' and 'when' both refer to the past. This is permissible because what is anticipated from Allah is like what is existent and certain in its realization. And you cannot say: if you could see what it encompasses, as if it were said: if the vision were from you, and 'when' is a condition for it. They cry out with their saying: 'Our Lord, we have seen and we have heard,' yet they are not helped, meaning: we have seen the truth of Your promise and Your warning, and we have heard from You confirming Your messengers. Or we were blind and deaf, so we have seen and heard; 'Send us back' is the return to this world. 'We would certainly give every soul its guidance' by way of compulsion and force. But we have built the matter on choice. The saying 'But we have built the matter on choice' is because the Mu'tazila imposed righteousness upon Allah. They said: He willed guidance for all, but it is a will of choice, not a will of compulsion. Therefore, not everyone was guided, only some. If He had willed compulsion, everyone would have been guided. The people of the Sunnah did not impose anything upon Allah and said: Whatever Allah wills happens, and what He does not will does not happen, whether it is good or evil. And the implication of the will for the occurrence of the desired does not necessitate compulsion and coercion for the servants, for they have agency in their actions, even if they are, in reality, created by Allah, glorified and exalted is He, as established in the science of monotheism. Without coercion, they preferred blindness over guidance. Thus, the word of punishment was justified upon the people of blindness rather than the sighted. Do you not see what follows it from His saying: 'So taste for what you have forgotten'? He made tasting the punishment a result of their actions: from forgetting the consequence, lack of thought about it, and neglecting preparation for it. The intended meaning of forgetting is the opposite of remembering, meaning: that immersion in desires has distracted you and preoccupied you from remembering the consequence, and it has imposed forgetfulness upon you. Then He said: 'Indeed, We have forgotten you' in retaliation, meaning: We have recompensed you for your forgetting. It is said to mean abandonment, meaning: you have neglected thinking about the consequence, so We have abandoned you from mercy. In the resumption of His saying: 'Indeed, We have forgotten you' and the construction of the verb on 'if' and its subject is a reinforcement in taking revenge on them. The meaning is: So taste this, meaning what you are in of bowed heads, disgrace, and sorrow due to forgetting the meeting, and taste the eternal punishment in Hell due to what you have done of sins and destructive major sins.