Claim: Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, issued a fatwā permitting man to chop up and eat wife in event of extreme hunger.
Status: False
- It's reported that the claim first appeared on a satire news website.
- The fatwā is not found on the Sheikh's website.
- The official press agency of the Saudi Arabia government quotes the Sheikh's denying it is true.
- Other religious officials are quoted as saying that such a view could not come from any Muslim, let alone a scholar.
A news article by CNN arabic reported that Khalid ben Abdel-Rahman El-Shaye, assistant secretary general of the Global Commission for Introducing the Messenger, affiliating to the Muslim World League said:
الحقيقة أن هذا الكلام مختلقٌ ومفترى على سماحة الشيخ من أساسه، فهو كلام ممجوجٌ وتصورٌ سقيمٌ لا يمكن أن يصدر من أي مسلم أو مسلمة، فضلاً عن عالم جليل وشيخ كبير يرجع إليه المسلمون في بقاع شتى في شؤون دينهم. والقصد من اختلاقه التشويش والإساءة.
Translation:
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. Their aim is to create harm.
Furthermore, the official Saudi Press Agency quotes the Sheikh's explicitly saying that the claim is false:
Translation:
The Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Sheikh, denied that fatwā attributed to him claiming that "eat women meat in the event of severe hunger," stressing that this false claim aims stand behind the leadership against attempts to distract the nation from the Nile.
He said his eminence in a statement to Saudi Press Agency: This false fatwā comes in the context of distorting the image of Islam, which is the highest human affair and generosity, without exception, man or woman, and kept the rights to his religion and himself and his mind and presented, citing words of Almighty God (O ye who believe that the news come to you punk Vtbinwa that Tsibwa folk in ignorance of what you did repentant).
The Grand Mufti stressed the urgent need to unite the community and strengthen its resolve against the common enemy that lurks nation, and not to pay attention to the lies and falsehoods promoted in order to destabilize society, and dispersing its objectives, and the Nile from our country and the Muslim countries.
Additionally, the official website of Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, binbaz.org.sa, shows no evidence of any fatwā of that kind:
It is also reported that the alleged fatwā, has actually appeared first on a satire website in a Northern-African Arab country, has stoked controversy as many shared it over various social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
A fatwā in the Islamic faith is the term for the legal opinion or learned interpretation that the Sheikhul Islam, a qualified jurist or mufti, can give on issues pertaining to the Islamic law. src
