Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti Issues Fatwa Against Chess

[cronus]

http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/1.698955

Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti Issues Fatwa Against Chess

DPA  - Saudi Arabia's top Muslim cleric has said the game of chess is prohibited in Islam, calling it a "work of the devil."
The conservative kingdom's grand mufti, Sheikh Abdel-Aziz al-Sheikh, has said in a fatwa (a binding religious edict) that chess wastes time and stirs enmity among people.
The cleric has announced the controversial fatwa in several TV broadcasts in recent months, the last being on Thursday.
"Chess is like alcohol and gambling that God has forbidden," he said, responding to a question on the Saudi religious television station Almajd.

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[Svartalf]

Those guys are crazy, wonder why there's anybody left in the country

[laklak]

You think they'd eventually self-destruct from their own stupidity.

[klr]

Let's see him issue a fatwa against football next, on the same grounds, and see where it gets him

Don't these people have anything better to do? What a complete and utter waste of time to be even thinking about this.

[JimC]

Anything other than work that takes one's mind off one's religion is a distraction from the purity of islam.

Apparently.

[pErvinalia]

Fucking stupid country.

[cronus]

Playing chess on Mars would be a lethal combination in Islam.