Saudi Arabia Court Sentences Imam of Grand Mosque for 10 Years

A human rights group said Monday that Sheikh Saleh Al-Talib, a well-known imam and preacher at the Grand Mosque in Makkah, has been given a ten-year prison sentence by the Saudi Court of Appeals.

According to the group, the Specialized Criminal Court’s decision to clear Sheikh Al-Talib of the allegations against him was rejected by the Court of Appeal. Al-Talib, who is 48 years old, was detained in August 2018, but no formal justification for the detention was given. At the time, he served as an imam in Makkah. Al-Talib was detained, according to the social media advocacy group Prisoners of Conscience, which tracks and records the detention of Saudi preachers and religious figures, after he gave a sermon on the obligation of Muslims to denounce wrongdoing in public.

Numerous preachers have been detained by Saudi Arabia since the summer of 2017. While Saudi Arabia was leading a siege on neighbouring Qatar, others were criticizing it for openly pushing for peace between the Gulf States. The priests are still in jail more than a year after the boycott came to an end. Four years after his arrest, activists urged the Saudi government to free Sheikh Salah Al-Talib, the former imam of Makkah’s Grand Mosque. Activists showed their support for Al-Talib on social media by using the hashtag four years since the imam of the Holy Mosque was arrested.

According to a report by Al Jazeera, Sheikh Saleh derided the mixing of unrelated men and women at concerts and other mixed entertainment events in his sermon, according to the Arabic news outlet Khaleej Online. In an interview with CBS News, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman stated that we have radicals who restrict mixing between the genders and are unable to distinguish between a man and a woman being together alone and their being together in a workplace.

Former Imam of Kaaba appears in TV ad

Many of those concepts are in opposition to the Prophet’s (PBUH) manner of life. Al Jazeera added that Sheikh Saleh’s Arabic and English Twitter accounts were also suspended hours after his alleged detention.