Blogger Saudiwoman, who was misquoted and misidentified by the Arab News hacks in the article linked above, writes about this new development (I've edited one sentence in this quote for grammar and clarity.)
Women only sports clubs have been popping up everywhere and their fees are now within reach of the average woman. They offer aerobic classes, self-defense and even salsa dancing. However they have no legal licensing umbrella because according to the government all forms of exercise are for men only. So the owners of these clubs get a license for a salon or a child activity center and then expand from there. Ultra conservatives are dead against these establishments because they believe that they lead Saudi women to sin through the influence of and interaction with unsavory feminists, and sometimes they even go so far as to claim lesbians work there and frequent the clubs (according to the muttawa sexually repressed wild imagination). Moreover they believe that exercise goes against femininity and that it is an exclusively manly domain.
"Exercise goes against femininity" - yeah, sure. Exercise is important to overall mental health and helps stave off or improve control over mental illness. Such 'ultra-conservatives' must consider madness and poor mental health to be expressions of "normal" feminity, since they are more likely to be present among the women in their families who, no doubt, are prohibited from exercise.
The Indonesian Council of Ulemas has ruled that Indonesian Muslims must exercise restraint when practicing yoga. The 700 clerics announced their ruling at a meeting in West Sumatra on Sunday. They said that Muslims may continue to practice yoga as a means of exercise, but that they must refrain from combining it with such Hindu religious rituals as the recitation of mantras.
The clerics failed to agree an outright ban on smoking. They did, however, agree that it should not be permitted in public and that pregnant women and children should be prevented from using tobacco. The tobacco industry is a major source of income and employment in Central and East Java.
The meeting was opened on Saturday by the Vice President of Indonesia, Jusuf Kalla. He called on the clerics not to sow fear with their pronouncements, and to take account of a changing world.
Happiness helps too: A study at Birmingham University found a link between higher levels of antibodies to flu and being in a happy marriage. Those with the highest marital satisfaction had the higher antibody responses to a flu vaccine after four weeks.
The Muslim comics of Salam Cafe, an Australian TV comedy that ran for 10 weeks in the spring. It included "gags about Muslims flying on one-way tickets, owning mobile phones with extra room on the SIM card and playing footy for the Essendon Bombers. Panel member Susan Carland was introduced as 'the Imelda Marcos of hijabs.' There was also a "Where's Osama" segment, and an Idol rip-off "Australian Imam, the search for Australia's most controversial Imam"."
Laughing at Charlie Chaplin can be a serious business. Chortling at a funny film may seem to be an activity with few consequences for health, but research shows that it does more than exercise the 20 or so face muscles involved in laughing. When researchers showed a group of mothers with babies diagnosed with eczema, Chaplin's Hard Times or a weather documentary, those who laughed at the funny film had higher levels of melatonin in their breast milk. And when their babies were fed the melatonin-rich milk, they had fewer allergic reactions.
"Our results show that laughter of mothers may be helpful in the treatment of infants with eczema," say the doctors at the Moriguchi-Keijinkai Hospital in Japan, who carried out the study.
The study is among the latest research to show that laughter, humour and happiness play a key role in good health and longevity, and can positively affect diseases and conditions as diverse as high blood pressure, flu, heart disease, arthritis and diabetes. As NHS nurses start attending laughter workshops to encourage them to lighten up and make hospital stays a more pleasant experience for patients, research is increasingly showing the value of laughter and humour.
The concept that laughter is good for you is also being used in therapy to improve quality of life, provide some pain relief, encourage relaxation, and reduce stress. Some centres now provide some kind of humour therapy -- one in five National Cancer Institute treatment centres in the US offer it -- and it can involve watching films, listening to tapes, reading books or attending humour workshops. It can also be combined with exercises, such as yoga.
But can it do more than ease stress and act as a distraction? Can laughter actually affects the progression of illness, boost the immune system, and reduce symptoms of diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis?
It has long been accepted that low mood, including depression, can have a negative effect on physical health. Patients who are depressed at the time of heart bypass surgery, for example, are more than twice as likely to die during the following five years. Stress chemicals triggered by being made redundant or getting divorced can also double the likelihood of death from heart disease or stroke.
Now research is showing that laughter and humour can have a positive effect on health and longevity. Just how is not clear, but studies are throwing up some clues. Happiness and laughter have been shown to increase natural killer cell activity in blood and free radical-scavenging capacity in saliva, as well as lowering levels of the stress hormone cortisol. It is also thought that laughter causes the release of special neurotransmitter substances in the brain, endorphins, that help control pain. And there are more direct physical effects of laughter, including increased breathing, more oxygen use, and higher heart rate.
Some research suggests that laughter can boost the immune system. When researchers at Japan's Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine showed a 75-minute funny film to a group of men and women, they found that that blood levels of natural killer cells activity increased by 26.5 per cent.
Happiness also boosts the immune system. A study at Birmingham University found a link between higher levels of antibodies to flu and being in a happy marriage. Those with the highest marital satisfaction had the higher antibody responses to a flu vaccine after four weeks. A second study the University of North Carolina shows happiness in a marriage was linked to lower blood pressure, and fewer stress hormones.
There is a market for sensible, factual health coverage because it affects people's lives. It's a wonder that so many arbiters of what's "news" have yet to discover that.
Salaam writes: One of my interests with this blog is addressing the problem of the paucity of information for Muslims about health, the environment and sexuality. But it would be false to assume that American non-Muslims are much better off. The difference might be that conservative notions of modesty can prevent knowledge transfer in the Muslim community as well as disinterest/disapproval of knowledge that is generated from non-Muslim sources - whereas the larger American community at least has the potential of more receptivity and access to information.
A recently released Pew Research study conducted with the Kaiser Family Foundation monitored health coverage from January 2007 to June 2008 to determine which subjects got the most coverage, and in which media. The study was designed to be particularly broad-ranging -- rather than, for instance, analyzing how TV news covers breast cancer, the study looked at how television, radio, print, online outlets and other forms of media covered everything heath-related, from specific diseases to health policy and more.
What were the results? According to the report, "News about health occupies a relatively small amount of American news coverage across all platforms: 3.6 percent of news during 2007 and the first half of 2008." In a list of most frequently covered topics, health came in eighth -- far above religion, education and celebrities, but below the economy, crime, foreign affairs and politics.
These results, while hardly thrilling, don't seem abysmal at first. Health gets more coverage than celebrities, after all, which seems like a victory in our current climate. But compounding the small amount of attention devoted to health, the breakdown within existing health coverage shows a tendency to focus on controversial or sensational aspects of health issues, leaving vital policy information behind. One need only to think about the extreme health stories on the nightly news (Are your pills contaminated? Are your children at risk from a rare strain of X?) to understand the crux of the problem. Why focus on the actual public ramifications of various diseases and policies when Jenny McCarthy and Amanda Peet are going at it over autism? Or we can lure people in front of the TV by frightening them?
This is a situation only too familiar to reproductive-health advocates, who often see the public health crises caused by lack of reproductive health care submerged beneath the kind of pitched battles or titillating stories the media loves.
Within the small percentage of health news, outlets focused 41.7 percent on specific diseases, the kind of coverage that spikes somewhat when a celebrity like Elizabeth Edwards, Tony Snow or Tim Russert has cancer or a heart attack. Public health issues made up 30.9 percent of coverage, including stories like the tuberculosis-infected man-on-plane scandal, and reports on gossipy health problems like binge drinking.
One of the most provocative - and even paradoxical - suggestions involves something called the hygiene hypothesis: Because natives of other nations, especially those in the developing world, may encounter more infections growing up, their immune systems often ignore threats such as dust mites and mold.
US black kids get out of the house: Theories for the disparity range from more sunlight exposure for foreign-born African-Americans during childhood, to less time spent cooped up inside, where mold, cockroach droppings, and other triggers dwell.
A landmark survey conducted on street corners in Dorchester shows that African-Americans born in this country are nearly three times more likely to have asthma than their black neighbors born abroad, a finding that could yield important clues about a national epidemic.
The study was conceived in 2005 by frustrated residents of Dorchester who wanted to understand why asthma is rampant in their neighborhood. The results appear in the November edition of the Journal of Asthma.
It is believed to be the first study to show varying asthma rates among African-Americans based on place of birth - although scientists can't say for sure why Dorchester blacks born outside the United States suffer less from asthma.
"It has a through-the-looking-glass feel to it," said Doug Brugge, the researcher at Tufts University's medical school who presided over the study. "We're used to thinking that people coming from developing countries have worse health."
Theories for the disparity range from more sunlight exposure for foreign-born African-Americans during childhood, to less time spent cooped up inside, where mold, cockroach droppings, and other triggers dwell.
One of the most provocative - and even paradoxical - suggestions involves something called the hygiene hypothesis: Because natives of other nations, especially those in the developing world, may encounter more infections growing up, their immune systems often ignore threats such as dust mites and mold. When the immune system does not regularly confront life-threatening diseases, its ammunition instead is directed at lesser enemies, provoking allergic reactions that can spawn asthma.
"There may be a price to be paid for growing up in a more sterile, hygienic environment with fewer infections as a child," such as the United States, said Dr. George O'Connor, director of the Adult Asthma Program at Boston Medical Center. "And the price to be paid is that your immune system may develop more along the lines of promoting allergic responses."
The Dorchester findings did not come as a total surprise: Earlier research had shown that foreign-born Asians and Hispanics appear less prone to the disease.
The discovery is another piece in the emerging jigsaw puzzle of asthma, which has roughly doubled in prevalence nationally during the past three decades.
Evidence of the epidemic can be heard all across Dorchester, as the sounds of suffering ricochet through homes: coughing jags, raspy wheezing, chest-clenching gasps for air - and time spent in clinics rather than at school and work.
Everywhere Mary White turns, the Boston native finds someone whose life has been defined by the disease, she says, starting with her own. She has asthma and so do her three sons, and her mother. So did her deceased father.
Malaysian prince: 'Islam is a progressive religion and the ulama (scholars) should be confident of the followers' faith rather than micro-managing their way of life.'
Prince Tunku Naquiyuddin seated, center. The responsible adults of Malaysia take action and squash the anti-yoga fatwa.
Salaam writes: Alhamdulliah for the Malaysian royals. I'm ending my Internet ad campaign against the ban. Good won out in the end against the deviance of the fatwa council.
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia's prime minister said on Wednesday Muslims should still take up yoga, reversing an outright ban that has drawn widespread protests amid concerns over growing Islamic fundamentalism in the multiracial nation.
Malaysia's National Fatwa Council, comprising Islamic scholars, told Muslims at the weekend to avoid yoga because it uses Hindu prayers that could erode Muslims' faith.
But the decision drew a sharp rebuke from many Muslims and even Malaysia's sultans, or hereditary rulers, who said that they should be consulted on any matters involving Islam.
Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi moved to contain the damage, telling the national news agency Bernama that Muslims could carry on doing yoga but minus the chanting.
"I wish to state that a physical regime with no elements of worship can continue, meaning, it is not banned. I believe that Muslims are not easily swayed into polytheism," he said.
Just before Abdullah spoke, the eldest son of the ruler of the central Negeri Sembilan state took the government to task over the yoga ruling.
"Islam is a progressive religion and the ulama (scholars) should be confident of the followers' faith rather than micro-managing their way of life," Tunku Naquiyuddin told a luncheon.
"If I go to a church or a Buddhist temple, is there any fear of me converting? ... Where do we draw the line?" the online version of the Star newspaper quoted him as saying.
The yoga fatwa ruling came hot on the heels of another edict against young Muslim women wearing trousers.
Fatwas or religious edicts are not legally binding, but they are highly influential in Malaysia, where Malay-Muslims form just over half of the country's 27 million people.
A Buddhist monk practices Shaolin kung fu. The martial arts are another ancient Asian cultural development that did not exist in gulf Arab societies at the time of the prophet and that has been integrated into other Asian religions. Anything that was valuable enough to be passed on through the generations such as yoga and the martial arts would have been picked up and brought into the local religions. The gulf Arab cultural imperialism that underlies salafi ideology such as that applied to create the yoga ban would seem to also dictate that the martial arts must be forbidden. The fatwa council seems to have forgotten that it is possible to be a good Muslim and have a non-Arab cultural heritage.
A commenter at Malaysiakini.com writes: Now that Muslims are officially banned from practising yoga, I can see a slew of other activities especially those concerning martial arts that will be banned to Muslims as they also may have religious connotations.
Shaolin martial art is the mother of all other Eastern martial arts, started by Bodhidharma, an Indian Buddhist monk.
Till today it is promoted by the Buddhist monks in China and the Shaolin Temple is world famous today because of its martial arts.
Certainly there are religious connotations in Shaolin martial arts like the Stance of the 18 Immortals and the Buddha's Palm. Get a Steven Chow movie like 'Shaolin Soccer' or 'Kung Fu Hustle' and you will know what I mean.
From the main source, different masters in different countries have evolved their own martial arts but the fact remains it is Buddhist in origin. In karate for instance, the Shorinyu school is actually a Shaolin school.
Looking at things, with the yoga fatwa now coming into force, I am truly sorry for all Muslim martial arts practitioners and fans and all the karate instructors in the police force.
It will be a matter of time before a fatwa is issued to ban martial arts based on the same reasoning that they have religious connotations.
To all Muslim karate national athletes, we hope you can represent the country for the 25th Sea Games in Laos before the ban.
Therapist: 'An overreaching fatwa like this is not good for cancer survivors as unnecessary worry can have a negative effect on them psychologically and physically. Some are already feeling guilty for practising it.'
Malaysia is one of over 50 countries that designates medical tourism as a national industry. Malaysia's competiveness as a medical tourism destination could be damaged if local yoga professionals' businesses collapse due to the adverse effects of the anti-yoga fatwa. Yoga is an integral part of many cancer recovery programs.
Kuala Lumpur, Nov 24: Malaysian Muslims who have been fighting cancer with the help of yoga are "disappointed and confused" over last week`s move by the National Fatwa Council to ban the ancient Indian fitness regime among Malays.
"There is a need for the Fatwa Council to explain their edict properly so that Muslims who practise yoga, including cancer survivors, are not made to feel guilty," said National Cancer Society of Malaysia`s advisor Zuraidah Atan.
Atan said she had been inundated with calls from cancer survivors who were confused and apprehensive over the fatwa (edict).
"An overreaching fatwa like this is not good for them as unnecessary worry can have a negative effect on them psychologically and physically. Some are already feeling guilty for practising it," she was quoted as saying in a newspaper on Monday.
"Besides yoga, we also have qi gong sessions. Is the Fatwa Council going to ban qi gong, too, because it has its origins in Buddhism? Then how about line dancing? We also organise that as a form of light exercise for cancer survivors," she said.
She said yoga, qi gong and line dancing were good for cancer survivors because they were group dynamics, which helped promote positive thinking and unity among survivors belonging to different religions and communities.
Atan said there were many levels of yoga and only yoga in its purest form involved religious chanting.
"Most Muslims know this. The yoga that is being taught in yoga centres nationwide only concentrates on techniques and has nothing to do with the promotion of Hinduism," she stressed.
Atan said the Cancer Society organised a weekly free yoga session for cancer survivors, especially those who were over 40 as a form of relaxation and breathing exercise.
The National Fatwa Council Saturday declared that yoga is haram (prohibited) in Islam and Muslims are banned from practising it.
Council Chairman Abdul Shukor Husin said yoga had been practised by the Hindu community for thousands of years and incorporated physical movements, religious elements together with chants and worshipping, with the aim of being one with god.
He noted that while merely doing the physical movements of yoga without the worshipping and chanting might not be against religious beliefs, Muslims should avoid practising it altogether as doing one part of yoga would lead to another.
Ninie Ahmad: 'To portray yoga as harmful to one's faith will be a great loss to the country. In Klang Valley alone, there are 30,000 registered yoga practitioners in yoga centres and gyms, and 30 percent of them are Muslims.'
Ninie Ahmad (center), the brand ambassador for Adidas yoga line, said she would go ahead with plans to open a three-studio yoga centre next month. She doesn't know whether the fatwa will cause her to lose her corporate endorsement. My main post on this issue that links to all other information I've published is here.
Excerpted from an article in New Kerala: The edict would affect thousands of individual Muslim practitioners, besides yoga centres and those engaged in its business endorsement.
Muslim Malays form the majority in Malaysia's 28 million population that also has 33 percent ethnic Chinese and eight percent Indians, a bulk of them Hindus.
Although worried how the fatwa would affect her business, Ninie Ahmed, who is the brand ambassador for Adidas yoga line, said she would go ahead with plans to open a three-studio yoga centre next month.
"The show goes on for me. I have invested half a million on this. Yoga is my bread and butter," she said, adding that she was unclear how the ruling would affect her Adidas endorsement.
The centre, to be called Be Yoga, is a Bumiputera-owned (Muslim Malay) company and will be run and operated by Muslims.
"To portray yoga as harmful to one's faith will be a great loss to the country. In Klang Valley alone, there are 30,000 registered yoga practitioners in yoga centres and gyms, and 30 percent of them are Muslims," Ninie said.
Asked if she was afraid of the repercussions from the authorities, she said her centre promoted yoga purely as an exercise.
"I'm disappointed that the council failed to see the bigger picture of the benefits of yoga."
A fellow yoga enthusiast, Azzy Soraya, said it was unfair to think that Muslims who practised yoga were a step closer to converting to Hinduism.
"Yoga moved on from its religious roots a long time ago. It's about well-being and all religions encourage their followers to stay healthy."
Some Islamic bodies also disapproved of the ban, The Star newspaper said.
M. Revathi, 40, who has been teaching yoga part-time for about 10 years, said some people mistook the names of the asanas (postures) as religious verses as they were in Sanskrit "but there's nothing religious about the names".
"As for the meditation part, it's not religious either. I tell my students to relax and free their minds, and they can meditate in whatever language they like," she said.
The Islamic religious department in northern Perak state has also revoked an earlier decision to adopt the ruling, saying that the Perak sultan's consent was not sought.
Salaam writes: This is an excellent example of the way historic Islamic societies functioned prior to the introduction of European colonization. Power in society was divided between the rulers and the scholars. Neither group had absolute power so that they could check each other if one became deviant. Mashallah for Malaysia's rulers, and for showing the rest of the world how a society grounded in Islamic values can govern itself to thwart extremism.
A note: I have been running Internet advertisements in Malaysia denouncing this ruling in the most strident language possible. My primary post about the ban is here.
KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - A ban on yoga by Malaysia's highest Islamic body is facing opposition from royal state rulers, who are considered the guardians of Islam in the country, reports said Tuesday.
Two states in Malaysia -- Perak and Selangor -- are delaying gazetting the fatwa, which would make it state law, saying that their royal rulers should first give their consent.
Devotees of yoga and moderate Muslim groups have criticised the weekend ruling by the government-backed National Fatwa Council, which said that the ancient practice could erode Muslims' faith.
In an unusual intervention, Selangor's Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah reportedly said the yoga ban could not be implemented before his state's fatwa committee had a chance to consider the matter.
Sharafuddin said the issue had to be investigated "in greater detail so that a decision is not made hastily," according to the Star newspaper.
The Islamic religious department in northern Perak state has also revoked an earlier decision to adopt the ruling, saying that the Perak sultan's consent was not sought.
Norhayati Kaprawi from prominent civil society group Sisters of Islam said the sultans were exercising their right to be heard in such cases.
"The danger is when a fatwa is elevated as if it was something divine and cannot be challenged, when in fact all it means literally is just an opinion," she told AFP.
Sharafuddin also said that future religious decrees should be approved by the council of state rulers before being announced, to avoid "any confusion or controversy."
A vociferous Islamic religious leader from the northern state of Perlis, Asri Zainul Abidin, also spoke out against the yoga decision and said Muslims could follow a non-religious version of the popular exercise.
"The fatwa council should not be so rigid and should instead consider allowing Muslims to practise it solely for health benefits instead of issuing a blanket ban on the practice," he told AFP.
Sisters in Islam's Norhayati said that the edict also rang "warning bells" about a "regressive trend" in Malaysia, where the population is dominated by Muslim Malays, who live alongside ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities.
"It has been escalating lately and this reflects a larger issue of growing conservatism," she said.
A politically changing Malaysia seems increasingly to be looking for a national and ethnic identity through a dangerous fatwa-ization of their society.
New yoga teachers graduating from a Singapore yoga school. Perhaps Abdul Shukor Husin thought no one would think to confirm his assertion that yoga had been ruled haram in Singapore. Or maybe he did so little investigation of the matter in carrying out his duties as chairman of the fatwa council that he blurted out the falsehood in complete ignorance.
Gabriele Marranci writes: The Malaysian National Fatwa Council has issued another of its many fatwas, which have seen an increase in numbers during this time of political turmoil. "Yoga is forbidden for Muslims. The practice will erode their faith in the religion," said Abdul Shukor Husin, the council's chairman.This time the target was one of the most (also among Muslims) anti-stress activities: Yoga. As mental and physical discipline, Yoga has been appreciated by many Muslim scholars, who have even suggested that the practice could be 'Islamicized'.
Certainly, no scholar had thought of forbidding it, since Muslims, particularly in India other South Asian areas, have practiced various forms of Yoga for a long time. Indeed, there are many points of contact between the movement of the Muslim prayer and some of Yoga. Whomever is familiar with the philosophy behind yoga is very aware that it is not a religion, and it can be easily adapted to one's beliefs, whatever they may be.
Yoga is a 'tool', a 'technique', or better a 'mechanism'. However, in times where even 'water' may be claimed by a company to be halal, and in a Muslim world in which 'haram' is becoming the most popular word to empower oneself or one's group, I am not surprised that currently, restrictive fatwas are becoming the main political tools in trying to attract a certain electorate.
Of course, the Malaysian National Fatwa Council's radical decision has been promptly reported by mass media and blogs of many types. The reaction seems to be often the same: 'here we are, Muslims have done it again'. Yet what has been unreported is that the National Fatwa Council, inspired by prof. Zakaria Stapa of the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, is not a first. Christian families in the US have requested the banning of Yoga from schools on the basis that it is a Hindu religious practice, hence it violates the separation of state and church. Some evangelic preachers may actually have indirectly inspired the fatwa (see here for an interesting parallel with the present fatwa),
The interesting point is that Abdul Shukor Husin has tried to justify the quite unjustifiable fatwa mentioning other countries that allegedly would have invited Muslims not to take the Lotus position. Among the countries which Dr Abdul Shukor Husin mentioned there was also Singapore. The reality is different, and Singaporean Muslim clerics have affirmed again that practising yoga is acceptable for Muslims. Should we suggest perhaps to the Malaysian Muslims to cross the border and enjoy their hour of relaxing yoga before crossing the Malaysia-Singapore Second Link and going back to a politically changing Malaysia which seems increasingly looking for a national and ethnic identity through a dangerous fatwa-ization of their society.
'I don't think it had caused any Muslim to convert to Hinduism, neither has it weakened their faith,' said Norhayati Kaprawi, an official with Sisters of Islam. Her group has been hosting yoga classes for Muslims for over a year and has vowed that they will continue.
Sisters in Islam has been advocating on behalf of women and against extremism in Malaysia, and had a book published by their group "Muslim Women and the Challenge of Extremism," banned by the government this year. The book was edited by Norani Othman and is available for digital download from Amazon.com.
One of Malaysia's highest Islamic bodies came under fire from Muslims and yogis Sunday after its chairman said yoga was forbidden for Muslims because the practice would weaken religious faith.
Devotees of yoga and moderate Muslim groups criticized the ruling by Abdul Shukor Husin, chairman of the government-backed National Fatwa Council. Yoga is hugely popular in majority-Muslim Malaysia.
Physical versus spiritual "I don't think it had caused any Muslim to convert to Hinduism, neither has it weakened their faith," said Norhayati Kaprawi, an official with Sisters of Islam, a private group which champions the rights of Muslim women.
"It is just an exercise like tai chi, which has its roots in Buddism," she told the Star newspaper on Sunday. She said her group's staff had been holding yoga classes for the past year and that they would continue.
Rulings by the Fatwa Council are not legally binding on the country's Muslims, and there are no laws to punish those who ignore Council decisions -- but it is an enormously influential body.
Abdul Shukor decreed that yoga was forbidden because it involves the recitation of mantras and that it encourages a union with God that is considered blasphemy in Islam.
"The practice will erode their faith in the religion," he said on Saturday. "It does not conform with Islam."
But Sheikh Fawzi al-Zifzaf from al-Azhar in Egypt, the oldest center of Islamic learning, said there was a difference between physical practice and worship. But he warned that should the physical practice of Yoga lead to worship it would be forbidden.
"Yoga practice as physical exercise that teaches the body to be patient and poised is allowed in Islam," Fawzi told alArabiya.net.
"However, if the initial stages of yoga practice lead to advanced ones which involve a change in psychological religious views of the practitioner, then it becomes forbidden because it jeopardizes the beliefs of the Muslim," he said.
Yoga, an ancient Indian aid to meditation dating back thousands of years, is a popular stress-buster in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.
Muslim yoga teacher Siti Suheila Merican said that while yoga practice should not involve worshipping, the physical movements were good for improving health.
"Worldwide it has been accepted as an exercise for health benefits," she said to the Star newspaper.
Move to conservatism A veteran opposition lawmaker, Lim Kit Siang, said that the edict showed that Malaysia was heading towards a conservative type of Islam which could divide the multiracial country.
"It is sending a most unfortunate message that Malaysia, instead of moving towards a moderate and universal Islam, is moving towards an opposite direction which will create divisions," he told AFP.
Islam is the official religion of Malaysia, where more than 60 percent of the population of 27 million are Muslim Malays who practice a conservative version of the faith.
About 25 percent of the population is ethnic Chinese and eight percent is ethnic Indian, most of whom are Hindus.
Shukor reminded non-Muslims that they should not question the fatwa, or religious ruling. "This is not something for non-Muslims to interfere in or question as this matter involves Muslims and their faith," he said in anticipation of a backlash on the decision.
Fatwa council as intellectually incurious as George Bush, and just as harmful. 'We had actually sent letters to the relevant authorities - offering our opinion and expertise but there was no response.'
Yet more yoga classes in Singapore where the chairman of Malaysia's national fatwa council, Abdul Shukor Husin, falsely claimed that yoga had been forbidden to Muslims. Someone should remind the chair of the fatwa council that honesty is an Islamic virtue, and ignorance is a vice.
PETALING JAYA: Members of the Malaysian yoga society are disheartened by the fatwa by the National Fatwa Council declaring yoga as haram as the practice of yoga in Malaysia unlike that in India is tailored to local religious sensitivities and cultural traditions.
Nevertheless it will cooperate by discouraging Muslims from partaking in this healing exercise via physical movements.
T.Manisekaran, who is president of both the Malaysian Yoga Society (MYS) and Malaysian Association of Yoga Instructors said the research focused on before the fatwa was announced seems to have been focused more on the practice of yoga promoted by institutions in India which incorporate religion and spirituality into their practice.
"Malaysian yoga is different as it incorporates the local situation," said Manisekaran.
He said most of the instructors being born and bred as Malaysian are familiar and understand the sensitivities of the different cultural and religious groups and give yoga instructions based on this.
"We had actually sent letters to the relevant authorities - offering our opinion and expertise but there was no response," said Manisekaran adding MYS' aim was to disseminate the correct information on yoga practices in Malaysia.
"In Malaysia yoga is more of a treatment modality than a religious practice," he said adding that many doctors actually prescribe yoga for their patients.
"Yoga is used to treat an array of ailments including cancer, asthma, high blood pressure, stress and psychological conditions," said Manisekaran.
"Thus we have been encouraging more people to take up yoga as a firm of exercise," he added.
Manisekaran said this was also why the society had expected the national fatwa council to come up with a decision in favour of yoga.
"We have been telling people that there was no worry as in Malaysia everything is done through dialogue and mature discussion, but it turned out otherwise," he said.
"To us it is not much of a loss as to begin with we do not have many Muslim practitioners and students as there is already an existing fear of yoga among that community."
However it is sad that they will be losing out on enjoying the health benefit of this form of exercise and healing, said Manisekaran.
Maybe not the cool kids, just Egypt. And the fatwa council leader lied about Singapore banning yoga: It has not (the picture below is from a Singapore health club). Religiously deracinated yoga helps millions around world reduce stress without turning them into Hindus, but the fatwa council is anxious that some Muslims may be too weak to withstand 'the Hindu temptation.'
Salaam writes: By the intellectual lights of the Malaysian fatwa council, one would conclude that Hinduism - not Islam - is the fastest growing religion on the planet if we were to accept their paranoid fear that yoga is a gateway activity to Hindu conversion. The article below contains inaccurate facts in the first sentence. Yoga as practiced by Muslims and many other people does not necessarily include the Hindu prayer (the saying of aum or om), and if a teacher does recite the syllable, the Muslim participant does not. Also, most people outside of the Hindu faith who practice yoga do not seek "union with God" through the practice.
Why is yoga for stress reduction so important? See this article. Also know that many problems that afflict the Ummah, from marital discord to declining physical health, are aggravated, compounded or initiated by stress. The reason why yoga is so widely popular is because it is so effective. And unlike the alternatives suggested by the fatwa council, it can be practiced in the privacy of your own home while multi-tasking with other household activities.
Yoga is an ancient historical and cultural Asian tradition that has been drafted into the narrative of several Asian religions including the Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists. Therefore it follows that gulf Arab cultural imperialist salafis and their local cutouts would seek to eliminate it.
If the Buddhists wake up tomorrow and claim the automobile as a Buddhist icon, will the fatwa council ban us all from driving? Or perhaps we should follow the local Wahhabi colonials to their inescapable religious conclusion that since cars (like yoga) didn't exist in the time of Muhammad, we shouldn't be driving anyway.
What Malaysians need now is a progressive, grassroots movement to take back their fatwa council. If the people who claim to represent the religion become so alien to the true deen that you become alienated, don't leave the religion, reclaim it.
From Al Arabiya News Channel: Outraged Malaysians were told by the country's top Islamic council Saturday to avoid yoga because it uses Hindu prayers and encourages a union with God that is blasphemous.
"Yoga is forbidden for Muslims. The practice will erode their faith in the religion," Abdul Shukor Husin, chairman of the government-backed National Fatwa Council, told reporters.
Yoga, an ancient Indian aid to meditation dating back thousands of years, is a popular stress-buster in Kuala Lumpur.
"There are other ways to get exercise and a peace of mind," Husin said, adding "you can go cycling, swimming and eat less fatty food."
Husin said yoga involved physical and religious elements of Hinduism including the recitation of mantras he also said the ban would not be implemented on non-Muslims.
"For us, yoga can destroy a Muslim's faith. But this is not a matter for the non-Muslims to be concerned about because it's not imposed on them. We are looking out for the Muslim community," he said, noting Egypt and Singapore had issued similar rulings.
Malaysians outraged Malaysians have expressed outrage in blogs and letters to the editor since the council first announced a few weeks ago it was considering a fatwa against yoga.
"I wonder what's going to happen to the health clubs here in Malaysia... will they be forced to put up a 'No Muslims allowed' sign during their yoga classes?", said a posting at a popular Malaysian fitness blog, (www.thedailymuscle.com).
Social commentator Marina Mahathir, daughter of former prime minister Mahathir Mohammad, questioned the council's priorities.
"What endangers a society more... corrupt citizens and leaders, or yoga practitioners and females who dress in a masculine fashion?" she said in a recent column in the Star newspaper.
"Yet there are so many of us who are unwilling to trust our own conscience and would prefer to trust the robed and the turbaned to make rulings on things which we should be able to judge on our own," she said.
'Exposure to a stressful early-life environment has long-term consequences on brain development. It's a structural indicator for an increased risk of developing stress-related neuropsychiatric disorders in humans.'
WASHINGTON - Scientists have discovered how stress - in the form of emotional, mental or physical tension - physically reshapes the brain and causes long-lasting harm to humans and animals.
"Stress causes neurons (brain cells) to shrink or grow," said Bruce McEwen, a neuroscientist at Rockefeller University in New York. "The wear and tear on the body from lots of stress changes the nervous system.''
He said that stress is "particularly worrying in the developing brain, which appears to be programmed by early stressful experience."
Stress in early life, even in the womb, can later lead to undesirable changes in behavior and the ability to learn and remember. Other consequences may be substance abuse and psychiatric disorders, researchers said at a conference of neuroscientists in Washington this week (Nov. 18).
"Pre-natal stress can change the brain forever," said Tallie Baram, a neurologist at the University of California, Irvine. "Stress changes how genes are expressed throughout life."
Even short-term stress can be harmful, Baram said. She described her work with laboratory mice, which were immobilized for five hours and subjected to loud rock music. The ordeal reduced the number of delicate fibers that carry signals between neurons, an MRI brain scan of the stressed-out mice showed.
The experiment offered "insights into why some people are forgetful or have difficulty retaining information during stressful situations," Baram said. She said that neuroscientists hope they'll be able to "design drugs to prevent the damage due to stress."
