Mohamad al-Arefe

Education

He studied at Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, earning a bachelor's degree from the Faculty of Creed (1991), a master's on Ibn al-Qayyim's defence of Sunni doctrine (1996) and a doctorate on Ibn Taymiyya's position on Sufism (2001), both with first-class honours. He also received ijazas in Quran recitation and hadith from several teachers.

Career

He worked as an assistant professor at King Saud University in Riyadh and served as imam of the al-Bawardi mosque in the south of the city. He has been a member of bodies linked to the Muslim World League and of the Association of Muslim Scholars (Rabitat Ulama al-Muslimin).

His lessons and sermons, circulated on cassette from the late 1980s, followed by television programmes and a huge online presence, gave him an exceptionally wide audience. He has written some twenty books, from works of jurisprudence such as al-Mufid fi Taqrib Ahkam al-Adhan (1995) and al-Durar al-Bahiyya fi al-Alghaz al-Fiqhiyya (2000) to popular titles such as Enjoy Your Life (Istamti' bi-Hayatik), a guide to human relationships translated into several languages, and The End of the World, on the signs of the Hour.

Some of his public positions, notably on the Syrian conflict, led to entry bans from Switzerland (2013), the United Kingdom (2014) and Denmark (2017). In Saudi Arabia he was detained for about two months in late 2014, and his Twitter account was suspended in 2018.

Recitation

He has recorded surahs of the Quran in murattal style in the reading of Hafs 'an 'Asim.