Manama: A Saudi religious scholar has dismissed an alleged fatwa that allowed a married woman to have sex with other men if her husband failed to have intimate relations with her.
“The fatwa attributed to Shaikh Nasser Al Omar is a blatant lie and has absolutely no foundation,” the scholar’s office said. “It was obviously concocted to target Shaikh Nasser and undermine confidence in his religious aptitudes and speeches. Unfortunately, similar baseless fatwas have been maliciously attributed to religious scholars to tarnish their reputations and erode trust in them,” the office said in a statement carried by local news site Sabq on Wednesday.
Such rumours and allegations are part of a wider suspicious plot to sever all ties between scholars and common people and to cause friction and tension within societies, the office said.
“They are usually the work of people keen on isolating Islam and on fueling sectarianism. They usually start as simple allegations and then they are disseminated through several means and media, especially social media, to make them look like facts. Unfortunately, people who do not take the time to verify or check the information tend to take them at their face value and believe them,” the statement said.
“We urge all people who hear such alleged fatwas to check the sources and verify the information, particularly that official sites are accessible and allow the verification,” the office said.
