Mufti Ismail Berdiyev, who heads a Muslim association for the North Caucasus region, said 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 Ban Ki-Moon in 2014 launching a global campaign to end it.
Berdiyev, who was decorated by President Vladimir Putin 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.
A controversial Russian Orthodox cleric and blogger, the Church's former spokesman Vsevolod Chaplin, backed Berdiyev saying that Muslims had a right to a "time-honoured tradition".
"You probably don't need to 'circumcise' all women, there's no need with Orthodox women as they don't fornicate anyway," he added.
The head of the health ministry's public health department Oleg Salagai insisted FGM is "mutilating and not positive in any way,"
Berdiyev spoke after rights NGO Russian Justice Group released a report Monday on the ritual cutting of young girls' genitals in some mountain villages in the North Caucasus region of Dagestan.
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