Immediately after the reports emerged, Abdul Aziz denied issuing the fatwa and said, “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 the world’s Muslims.”

Sheikh Abdul Aziz, a Saudi Arabian grand mufti has reportedly passed a bizarre fatwa that permits married men to cannibalize women if they are “suffering severe hunger.”

“A fatwa attributed to the Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, which allows a man to eat his wife or parts of her body if the husband was afflicted with a severe hunger, raised concern and debate over social media since yesterday evening. 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.” a report by Mirror cites the full statement from Aziz’s office.

The cleric justifies this outrageous fatwa by citing Islam’s “sacrifice of women and obedience to her husband.”

While the women in Saudi Arabia rejoiced recently after they were allowed to vote, this fatwa adds further woes to them,The New Indian Express reported.

However, some reports indicate that the original source of the article is a spoof and has been mistakingly taken as news. The official Saudi website has not published any religious edicts regarding this issue yet.