Saudi cleric denies issuing fatwa 'allowing husbands to eat wives in case of extreme hunger'

Unsubstantiated fatwa legalising cannibalism reportedly claimed it would allow couple to 'become one'

Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Sheikh has denied issuing a fatwa (religious decree) allowing a man to “chop up and eat his wife’s body” in the event of extreme hunger, according to Al Arabiya news.

However, reports of the fatwa being issued are likely a hoax, as none of them carried any evidence or specified where or when such a fatwa had been issued.

In a statement issued to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA), the Grand Mufti dismissed the media reports as “attempts by enemies to distract society from their main cause at the moment, which is standing together behind our wise leadership against attempts to distort the ummah [the world’s Muslims].”

“This is also falls under attempts to distort the image of Islam which has honored the human-being without discrimination between men and women.”

Earlier reports had suggested that the top cleric has issued a fatwa legalising cannibalism, claiming it would allow the couple to "become one as their bodies will fuse together after the husband eats his wife”.

Reportedly, the unsubstantiated fatwa "allows a man to eat his wife or parts of her body, if the husband was afflicted with a severe hunger.”

“The fatwa is interpreted as evidence of the sacrifice of women and obedience to her husband and her desire for the two to become one,” it added, according to the International Business Times.

"The truth is that this is fabricated and made up from its basis. These ill thoughts cannot come from any Muslim, regardless of a great scholar who Muslims refer to from around the world. It was made up to create this confusion and damage," Khalid ben Abdel-Rahman El-Shaye', assistant secretary general of the Global Commission for Introducing the Messenger, affiliating to the Muslim World League, told CNN Arabic.

The Saudi grand mufti has been involved in controversial statements before as earlier he declared social networking site Twitter the source of all evil. The cleric was also embroiled in a controversy after he said all the churches across the Middle East need to be destroyed.