Ibn Abī Ḥātim and others transmit—from Mālik ibn Dīnār—that he said: “I heard al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, commenting on the verse, ‘Nothing has prevented Us from sending the signs except that earlier peoples denied them’ (al-Isrāʾ, 17:59), say: ‘It is a mercy granted to you, O community: had We sent the signs and you then rejected them, the very calamity that struck those before you would have struck you as well.’

And in the Gospel it is recorded that when the Jews asked the Messiah for a sign from heaven, he said to them, ‘A wicked generation seeks a sign, and no sign shall be given it except the sign of Jonah.’