Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Declares Chess to Be a Source of Evil. How About ’Jihadis’?

Rod Liddle

My favorite Islamic scholar, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, has come out with yet another corker. He is the gift that keeps on giving.

Sheikh Abdul bin Abdullah al Sheikh has decided that one of the world's gravest sources of evil is the game chess. Never play it, he told his countrymen, for it breeds enmity and hatred in the world.

Hmmm. On my top trumps list of stuff that breeds enmity and hatred in the world, chess comes some distance behind heavily-bearded Muslim mentalists, but that's probably just me. Previously, old Abdul was reported to have told men that it is ok to eat their wives if they are feeling a little peckish - although he later denied this injunction, just as I was setting the table for dinner and sharpening the knives.

He has also called for all churches to be destroyed and pronounced that the earth is "stationary" in space. We get aero-planes to go to places, he explained. If the earth was moving we could just wait for the places to come to us. Ah yes. Simple, when you think about it. You have to love these people. So fervent in their implacable stupidities.

Source: The Spectator, Edited by website team