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.[2][5] 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.[2]
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.[2] He once dreamed that he had become the imam at the Great Mosque of Mecca;[2] two years later, in 2008, he was selected by
King Abdullah to lead the tarawih prayers at the mosque.[2]
In
Japan's city of Bandu, a center of
Minhaj-ul-Quran was visited by Al-Kalbani on June 30, 2013.[6]
Al-Kalbani has said he is not a Shaykh (an authority in religious matters) but a
Qari.[7]
In a tweet, al-Kalbani stated that the non-existence of church bells in Saudi Arabia pleased him.[8][9]
Mecca crane collapse
Al-Kalbani criticised a tweet from a Saudi poet that said that the
cranes that collapsed in Mecca "fell to the ground in prayer". Al-Kalbani said that this was the "stupidest kind of nonsense". He sarcastically suggested that the other cranes did not collapse because they were "liberal".[10]
He criticised the current situation of gender segregation in mosques, where women are "completely isolated" from men and only connected via a microphone. He called this a "phobia of women".[14]
Shias
In an interview with the
BBC, al-Kalbani declared
Twelver Shias as apostates,[15] which triggered a backlash from followers of the sect in Saudi Arabia.[16] In 2019, however, he retracted his position after reading a book by fellow scholar
Hatim al-Awni, stating that he no longer considers as apostates those who "believe in one God, eat our
halal meat, and prostrate toward our
Qibla direction of Mecca".[17]
Stance on musical instruments
In a fatwa, al-Kalbani considered singing to be permissible under Islamic law, but retracted it in 2010.[18][19][20][21] In 2019, he backtracked on his retraction and again considered it permissible.[22] A religious singing event was attended by al-Kalbani.[23] A flute was purportedly used.[24][25][26]