The Samaritan at Sinai
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Quran 20:85–97 blames the golden-calf episode at Sinai on “al-Samiri” — the Samaritan. The Samaritans as a people emerged from the population history of the northern kingdom after the Assyrian conquest (8th century BC) and the schism around the Gerizim temple (Persian/Hellenistic period) — many centuries after Moses. A Samaritan at Sinai is like a Protestant at the Last Supper.
Common Muslim Responses
Apologists propose al-Samiri is a personal name or epithet unrelated to Samaria (from samara, or a tribal name Samir), or that he came from a place retroactively called Samaria.
Counter-Rebuttal
The classical commentators themselves (al-Tabari and others) understood him to be connected with the Samaritans, and the polemical fit is conspicuous: Samaritans were the archetypal calf-associated schismatics in Jewish eyes (cf. the long-standing Jewish accusation about the calf of Bethel in Samaritan territory), making this another documented motif-migration into the Quran’s retelling rather than independent history.