An unusually tenacious snowstorm blanketed much of the Middle East with fluffy, white snow last week.
Naturally then, a prominent Saudi cleric announced that building snowmen is “anti-Islamic.”
The cleric is Mohammad Saleh Al-Munadjid, according to Le Monde, a French newspaper (written in French).
Al-Munadjid gave his stern fatwa against building any snowman because a concerned father asked him about the practice on an Arabic website about Islam.
Thanks to the somewhat miraculous power of Google Translate, The Daily Caller can provide the basic thrust of Al-Munadjid’s long-winded, anti-snowman admonition.
The basic reasoning is that the strict form of Sunni Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia prohibits statues. Snowmen are statues that are in the likeness of human beings, even if children make the statues out of snow and the statues don’t last very long.
“God has given people the freedom to build anything they want as long as it contains no soul,” the cleric explained.
“There is no difference in the prohibition of statues” just because a statue is temporary, Al-Munadjid instructed the question-asking dad. Moreover, “infidels” act “in ignorance” when they make “statues worshiped without God.”
The reference here is to a widely accepted view among Muslim scholars that statutes of humans have been forbidden in the religion because adherents might at some point decide to worship those statues.
Not all Muslims agree with the Saudi cleric, notes Le Monde.
For example, Iyad El-Baghdadi, a blogger in the United Arab Emirates, responded by saying: “You think that our faith is so small that if you build a snowman, we will necessarily take it for a god and worship him.”
In addition to generating fatwas against snowmen, the recent snowstorm in the Middle East has led to the deaths of 36 Syrian refugees (including 24 children) in Syria and Lebanon. (RELATED: Freezing Hell: Deadly Snowstorm Killing Children, Babies As They Flee Terrorist Onslaught)
The winter storm, named either “Zeina” or “Huda” by different Arab countries, has brought subfreezing temperatures, as well as hail and up to 10 inches of snow, to areas throughout the Middle East. Refugees fleeing the violence of Bashar Assad’s regime, as well as the Islamic State terrorists, now live in tents not designed to withstand the cold of winter.These Three Charities Are Helping Christian Victims Of ISIS
Follow Eric on Twitter. Like Eric on Facebook. Send story tips to erico@dailycaller.com.