Prominent Saudi cleric named to deliver Day of Arafat sermon

Cairo: Sheikh Saleh bin Humaid, an imam and a preacher in the Grand Mosque, Islam's holiest in Saudi Arabia, has been picked to deliver the widely followed sermon on this year’s Day of Arafat, which marks the peak of the annual Islamic Hajj pilgrimage.

King Salman bin Abdulaziz has approved assigning Bin Humaid to deliver this sermon, the Presidency of Religious Affairs for the Two Holy Mosques has said.

Born in the Saudi city of Buraidah in 1950, Sheikh Bin Humaid studied for the high school degree in the holy city of Mecca, and later obtained a bachelor's degree at the College of Sharia and Islamic Studies.

He earned his master's degree from the Mecca-based Umm Al Qura University in 1977 and a doctorate from the same university five years later.

He worked as a teaching assistant at the College of Sharia at his alma mater, then a lecturer at the same university and an assistant professor until he became the head of the Department of Islamic Economics there.

He was the first doctorate holder to be appointed as an imam in the Grand Mosque.

He was later appointed as deputy president for the Affairs of the Grand Mosque and the Prophet's Mosque, then a member of the Saudi advisory Shura Council that he headed in 2002 under a royal order.

In 2009, he was named chief of the Supreme Judicial Council, a post he held for three years.

In 2011, upon his request, he was relieved of his duties as head of the Supreme Judicial Council, and appointed as an advisor at the Royal Court with the rank of minister.

He won the King Faisal International Prize for Service to Islam in 2016.

A massive influx of Muslims from across the globe are expected to attend the upcoming Hajj in and around Mecca.