Does 'You will not see Me' deny that God can be seen? Al-Zamakhshari and Ibn al-Munayyir

Dar al-Ma'rifa prints al-Zamakhshari's al-Kashshaf with Ibn al-Munayyir's al-Intisaf in its footnotes, so the debate between them appears on the same page. ¹ On Moses' request to see God in al-A'raf 143, al-Zamakhshari sets out his argument in his 'if you say… I say' manner, and Ibn al-Munayyir answers him note by note. ^{1 2}

At the same place al-Zamakhshari says that God's speaking to Moses was His creating the speech, uttered, in some body, as He created it written on the Tablet; Ibn al-Munayyir sees in this an open statement of the createdness of God's speech, the Mu'tazili doctrine, and argues that the verse is framed as a favour to Moses in singling him out for speech — if he had heard letters created in a body, everyone who heard speech would equal him — so Moses heard the eternal speech subsisting in God's essence without intermediary; and as God's essence may be seen though He is not a body, His speech may be heard though it is neither letter nor sound. ¹

• Pages are PDF pages of the Dar al-Ma'rifa edition (3rd ed., 1430 AH); the printed numbering matches here.
• The verses each side cites are not reproduced.
• Each side's hostile terms for the other (Hashwiyya, Qadariyya) belong to them in the original and are not used in the museum's voice.