Mufti Ismail Berdiyev, who heads a Moslem association for the North Caucasus region, said on Wednesday that if FGM "could be applied to all women, that would be very good" in an interview with Interfax news agency.
The practice, which ranges from pricking of the clitoris to its complete removal, causes infections and loss of sensation.
The procedure has come under massive international scrutiny in recent years, with UN chief the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon in 2014 launching a global campaign to end it.
Berdiyev, who was decorated by President Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...in March, said FGM does not stop women from fulfilling their ordained role of motherhood and if all women were mutilated, "there would be less fornication".
He later retracted his comments, claiming that he had been joking and Islam does not call for FGM.