For the last five months residents of the district of Al-Dhafer neighboring King Khale d Mosque in Al-Baha have had to go elsewhere to conduct their prayers. The mosque has been closed, ostensibly for renovation work, but locals instead blame the imam. “The imam shut it for a month without getting any work done inside,” said Muhammed Al-Ghamdi. A complaint made to the Endowments Administration on behalf of locals citing the imam's continual failure to attend dawn prayers and other duties since his appointment 14 years ago and “colluding with building companies to deliberately delay renovation work to allow him to complete his doctoral studies”, had obtained no response. An Endowments official, however, said the imam was not guilty of any such dereliction of duty, but had in fact been posted elsewhere. “He is working as an imam and giving Friday sermons at another mosque,” said the Endowments regional managing director Nasser Badran. “He will be there until the maintenance works at the mosque are complete, and once they are done he will return to work at the mosque.” Of the works themselves, Badran said that “most of them had been finished”, and that the whole process should be completed “within about a month”. “We have only received one complaint concerning the imam, which was about him being late for prayers, and that was dealt with according to regulations,” he said.
