Saudi cleric allegedly issues fatwa permitting husband to eat wife during ‘extreme hunger’

Saudi Arabia: A Saudi grand mufti allegedly issued a controversial fatwa stating that a man can chop up his wife and eat her body in the event of extreme hunger, according to Al Arabiya news.

The fatwa, an Islamic edict, was widely attributed to the mufti of Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, though it is not yet officially confirmed.

It was reported that the grand mufti allegedly went on to substantiate the fatwa by saying this will allow the couple to "become one as their bodies will fuse together after the husband eats his wife".

The report added: "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."

However no such mention of the fatwa is made yet on the mufti’s website.

Other religious Muslim authorities have denied that Saudi mufti issued any such fatwa.

"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.

In a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency on Thursday, Al-Asheikh said the religious edict was false and created by Islam’s enemies to slander him and “keep the community busy squabbling over irrelevant issues instead of standing united behind the rightly guided rulers.”

The last time the Saudi grand mufti came under the scanner was when he said that all the churches across the Middle East need to be destroyed. Previously, he also declared Twitter was the "source of all evil".