ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – An elderly man who appeared in a divine healing video that landed a controversial Kurdish cleric in Saudi authority detention earlier this week has branded the cleric a "liar". Mullah Ali Kalak, more widely known as Mala Ali Kurdistani, published a video on Facebook on Sunday in which he purportedly heals an elderly man of blindness in the holy Saudi city of Medina. The mullah licks his index finger with his tongue and places it on both of the man’s eyes, before reading a chapter from the Quran. Seconds later, the elderly man claims he has regained his sight. But in a viral clip broadcast by regional TV channels on Wednesday, the man, who Saudi police stated as being of Pakistani origin, dismissed Kalak as a "liar". In the video, filmed at a mosque, the elderly man is asked by someone sitting with him how he was healed - to which he replies "I did not tell him that I was blind ... I swear by Allah he is a liar." Both say Allah alone has the power to heal people, and pray for the Mullah to guided by Allah to the right path. However, in the healing video posted by Mullah Ali on Sunday, the man can be heard saying he had been blind for ten years. Kalak, who was released from Saudi detention on Wednesday, has long garnered controversy through videos which purportedly show him healing sick, possessed and disabled people using Quranic verses. He appeared in a video on his official page on Facebook on Wednesday, dismissing claims he stages the healings as “untrue”. The mullah called for an apology from Kurdish news outlets for publicizing his arrest, whose occurrence he neither confirmed nor denied. He insisted on the authenticity of his act of healing, claiming it was one unprecedented in the holy city. "The healing of blind and mute people in Medina has never happened before," he said. However, he has always insisted that his power to heal is not self-sourced, but divine. Kalak previously ran a healing center in his Kurdistan Region hometown of Kalak, 40 kilometers from Erbil. The center was repeatedly closed down by the government,a Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) health official told Rudaw English. He faced multiple arrests and court summons from KRG officials for his practice. Kalak said in another Sunday video that he had moved permanently to the Gulf after the clampdown on his practice by Kurdistan Region authorities.
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