Sheikh adil al kalbani biography books

Many people around the world know Sheikh Adil Al-Kalbani as the first black Imam of Saudi Arabia’s Holy Mosque in Mecca. Today, the former Imam is making headlines once again by calling for men and women to not be separated using a partition during prayers, and his reference for this is Islam’s past. According to Arab News, Sheikh Al-Kalbani spoke in a televised interview with Saudi Broadcasting Corp. (SBC), saying that this type of segregation did not happen during the era of Prophet Muhammad.

In his speech, he stressed that the current segregation practices have no roots in Islamic tradition and are a result of unjustified “paranoia” of women, even during prayer, saying, “Sadly today, we are paranoid — in a mosque — a place of worship. They are completely separated from men, they cannot see them and can only hear them through microphones or speakers. And if the voice has been cut off, they wouldn’t know what is going on (during prayer).”

Sheikh Adil Al-Kalbani

“In the Prophet’s era, and they are the most protective and God-fearing people. With all these traits, the men used to pray in the front and women prayed in the back of the mosque without a partition, not even a curtain. And today, it is a separated room, some even far from the original Prophet’s Mosque area, I believe this is some type of phobia toward women,” he continued.

He also took the opportunity to address the issue of conservative men who conceal the names of women in their family, saying, “Our daughters or sisters are no better than Aisha bint Abu Bakr (wife of the Prophet) — or the rest. All the Muslim women's names are known and their fathers' names are known. And they have given so much to society and the Ummah. It never harmed them that people knew their names.”

In 2008, Sheikh Al-Kalbani received a call from King Abdullah telling him that he had been chosen as the first black man to lead prayers in Mecca. Days later, Al-Kalbani’s presence in the Mosque was broadcasted by sa

Editor’s note: Sheikh `Adel Al-Kalbani was an imam of different Masjids in Saudi Arabia for decades and a former Imam of Tarawih prayer in Al-Masjid Al-Haram, Makkah. This story, recounted by him, has been first published in the book series, al-`a’idun ila Allah (The Returners to Allah) by Sheikh `Abdul-`aziz Al-Misnid. It is translated into English by OnIslam.net

I was not such a bad deviant… sure, there were major sins and minor slips that I committed, which were induced first by my own whimsical desires, and then by my family and my community. No one ever ordered me to offer prayer, and I never joined a session for memorization of the Glorious Quran.

Like all other children, I lived my childhood frolicking and rejoicing, hanging out in the streets after school, going for picnics and spending the nights watching TV. Of course, a person whose childhood is like that surely grows into a youth who loves amusement, joy, merrymaking and the like. Well, this happened to me.

Beginning of the Guidance Journey

I apologize for not elaborating on details, and I would like to shift to the beginning of my getting closer to Allah.

One day, I drove my mother to one of her friends. Waiting for her in my car, I turned on the radio, and by chance the indicator came upon the Quran station. The melodious recitation of Quranic verses stroke a chord with me. It was the first time I heared those verses;

{And the stupor of death will bring Truth (before his eyes): “This was the thing which thou wast trying to escape!”} (Qaf 50:17-29)

The reciter was the late Sheikh Muhammad Siddiq al-Menshawi (may Allah shower him with mercy), and the recitation was highly touching. It is true that I did not fully repent immediately upon hearing these verses; yet, it constituted the first step towards my guidance.

Obsessive Thoughts of Death

That year was the year of death; numerous luminous politicians and singers died. The p

Former Imam of Masjid al-Haram

Adil al-Kalbani (Arabic: عادل الكلباني) is a Saudi ArabianMuslim cleric who served as an Imam of the Great Mosque of Mecca.

Biography

Early years and studies

Adil al-Kalbani was born in Riyadh on April 4, 1958 to poor emigrants from Ras Al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates who came to Saudi Arabia in the 1950s. His father used to work as a government clerk. Due to his family's financial situation, al-Kalbani took a job with Saudi Arabian Airlines after finishing high school, whilst attending evening classes at King Saud University.

Al-Kalbani's first teacher in his further Islamic studies was Hasan ibn Gaanim al-Gaanim. He studied Sahih al-Bukhari, Jami` at-Tirmidhi and the tafsir of Ibn Kathir with him. He also studied with Mustafa Muslim who taught the tafsir of al-Baydawi at Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University. He also studied Akhir Tadmariyah with Abdullah Ibn Jibreen and the Quran with Ahmad Mustafa. In 1994, he passed the government exam to become an Imam.

Career as Imam

After a brief stint working at the mosque in Riyadh Airport, he moved on to working as an Imam at the more prominent King Khalid Mosque. He once dreamed that he had become the imam at the Great Mosque of Mecca; two years later, in 2008, he was selected by King Abdullah to lead the tarawih prayers at the mosque.

In Japan's city of Bandu, a center of Minhaj-ul-Quran was visited by Al-Kalbani on June 30, 2013.

Al-Kalbani has said he is not a Shaykh (an authority in religious matters) but a Qari.

Personal life

He has two wives and twelve children.

Views

Church bells

In a tweet, al-Kalbani stated that the non-existence of church bells in Saudi Arabia pleased him.^[9]

Remember this photo from 2008? I wrote about it on this blog in 2010.

It shows Lutfur Rahman, then the council leader rather than his current position as executive mayor, with Sheikh Adel Al-Kalbani walking by the Tower Hamlets town hall at Mulberry Place.

Behind them are Rofique Ahmed and Shafiqul Haque. Both were then, like Lutfur, Labour councillors. They are now, according to officers who have worked with them, two of the least productive independent members of his cabinet (but they still get some £20k a year for their ‘work’).

Al Kalbani was at that time the Second Imam of Kabbah, the Grand Mosque in Mecca, considered by Muslims as the most sacred place on Earth.

He had been appointed to the position by the Saudi royal family shortly before his trip to the UK where he was attending the annual Islamic Global Peace and Unity event at the ExCeL centre (Lutfur spoke at this year’s gathering last month).

As he had some down time, according to a conversation I had with Lutfur about it a bit later, he decided to pop over to the town hall where he found Lutfur’s office door open and so they had a cup of tea. “He’s a very pious man,” Lutfur told me.

Ever so spontaneously, Al Kalbani then led prayers at the town hall’s second building, Anchorage House, for staff and councillors.

The episode was cited by Cllr Helal Abbas in his dossier of evidence to Labour’s NEC in 2010 as proof that Lutfur was taking a less than secular approach to politics.

In the months and years after his visit, Al Kalbani, a Sunni, seemed to develop some rather hardline views, arguably against Christian and Jews in Saudi Arabia, but particularly about Shia Muslims.

This five minute YouTube video of him in a broadcast interview is fascinating:

He says Shia scholars are apostates (the punishment for whom in Islam can be a bit harsh), that Shia laymen are ignorant, that there can be no such thing in Saudi Arabia as a “Christia