Saudi cleric is very clear that taking selfies with cats is banned

Stop it with the selfies. 

That's the message from a prominent Saudi cleric who was asked about the "new trend" of people taking photos with cats in order to "be like the Westerners."

Saleh bin Fawzan al-Fawzan, a member of the Saudi Council of Senior Scholars, made the statments during a TV appearance posted in mid-April and translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). 

Asked several times about a "new trend of taking pictures with cats" that has been spreading among people, the cleric replies "What?!" before saying, "What do you mean pictures with cats? Taking pictures is prohibited."

Fawzan's stance isn't specific to cats themselves, but rather stems from an ultra-conservative, Wahhabi interpretation of Islam which considers photography blasphemous for depicting human or animal images. 

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“The cats don’t matter here,” he said. “Taking pictures is prohibited if not for a necessity, not with cats, not with dogs, not with wolves, not with anything.”

A similar pronouncement was issued earlier in May, when another Saudi cleric, Nasser al-Omar, called on the faithful to stop using filters on Snapchat. He claimed they are "sinful" as they are "distorting the image of the human face and the creation of God just to make people laugh." 

However, selfies and photographs are extremely popular in the Gulf kingdom and unlikely to be banned for real, despite the opposition of some hardline clerics. 

Muslim pilgrims even take selfies during the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that is a mandatory religious duty for all Muslims at least once in a lifetime: 

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