Rigor-mortifying! Egyptian cleric gagged after sex-with-dead-wife ruling

An Egyptian religious scholar has been ordered to stay off the air after he made the grave error of arguing in favour of necrophilia with a ruling that allows husbands to have sex with their dead wives.

Egypt's state media watchdog on Monday banned Sabri Abdel Raouf from making television and radio appearances over his deadly serious religious edict on so-called "goodbye intercourse", according to daily Youm7.

The professor of comparative jurisprudence at al-Azhar University, widely viewed as the Sunni Muslim world's leading Islamic institution, made the remarks last week on a local television programme.

"People who do this are perverts, I mean she is dead, how could anyone accept such a thing," Abdel Raouf said when asked if the act was permissible.

"However, is it considered adultery? If husbands do this they are going against societal norms, but they are not punished in the manner of adulterers."

"It is permissible even though it is a shameful, unnatural act," he added.

The scholar argued that because some schools of Islamic thought allow spouses to wash the bodies of their deceased partners before burial - this also technically allows intercourse.

	Sabri Abdel Raouf [YouTube]

Reports on the scholar's grisly remarks exploded in local media, prompting a tsunami of condemnation from clerics and commentators alike.

Abdel Raouf on Saturday reappeared on another television programme to explain his words had been misconstrued.

"I was responding to a question about a fatwa issued by another cleric, who deemed it permissible. I wish I had known that people would care so much about such a silly issue".

"An animal wouldn't do that with a dead female, so how would a human do it?" he added, refusing to apologise for his endorsement of the ruling.

Azhar University has announced it has summoned Abdel Raouf for questioning over his "unauthorised media appearances". 

The issue of sexual intercourse with dead wives first arose in 2011, when controversial Moroccan cleric Zamzami Abdul Bari ruled that husbands could sleep with their partners during a period of six hours after their passing.

Egyptian clerics have been known to make some bizarre rulings - so this may be par for the corpse.