Arafat Hasan: Saudi Arabia has yet to either confirm or deny reports of the detainment of Sheikh Dr Saleh bin Mohammed Al Talib, Imam and Preacher of the Grand Holy Mosque in Makkah.
On Sunday, social media advocacy group ‘Prisoners of Conscience’, which monitors and documents arrests of Saudi preachers and religious scholars, had stated that Sheikh Saleh was arrested after he delivered a sermon on the duty in Islam to speak out against evil in public.According to Al Jazeera’s report published on Wednesday, Arabic news website Khaleej Online reported that in his sermon, Sheikh Saleh “derided the mixing of unrelated men and women at concerts and other mixed entertainment events”.Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, in an interview to CBS News in July, had said, “We have extremists who forbid mixing between the two sexes and are unable to differentiate between a man and a woman alone together and their being together in a work place. Many of those ideas contradict the way of life during the time of the Prophet (pbuh).” Hours after his reported arrest, Al Jazeera reported that both of Sheikh Saleh’s English and Arabic Twitter accounts were deactivated.-Source: Al Jazeera
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