Breathing deeply, Malaysian business woman Delilah, 49, concentrated on the warrior stance, before slowly going into the triangle, another yoga pose to strengthen balance.
“It relaxes me,” she said. “I know what is good for me and what is not.”
However, her country’s religious authorities take a different view. In November last year, Malaysia’s national fatwa council, which issues religious rulings, ruled yoga haram, which means forbidden for Muslims.
Yoga includes many elements of Hinduism and could weaken Muslims’ faith, the council said in its ruling, which is non-binding, but faithful Muslims usually adhere to such rules.
About 60 percent of Malaysia’s 25 million inhabitants are Muslims. According to the constitution, every ethnic Malay is Muslim by definition, only ethnic Indian or Chinese Malaysians can freely choose their religion.
But Delilah, who grew up a Muslim and has been doing yoga for five years, does not really care. She never regarded yoga as a religious activity, she said. “But even if it is, I would certainly embrace something that teaches us to love and respect our
own body.”
Her teacher Ninie Ahmad, 27, a yogi and a Muslim, just opened her own yoga studio, Beyoga, in a posh Kuala Lumpur shopping mall. After some stretching exercises on a mat in front of a mirrored wall, the yogi gracefully assumed a new position.
“It is a big joke,” Ahmad said. The fatwa had triggered a lot of interest in yoga, she said.
For her, there is no conflict between yoga and Islam. “Ten years of practice made me a more profound Muslim,” she said. “I found out what body and mind can do together, it makes me appreciate my body and maker more.”
Statements like those do not sway the fatwa council, which fears yoga will erode its practitioners’ faith in Islam.
“Yoga combines physical exercise, religious elements, chanting and worshipping for the purpose of achieving inner peace and ultimately to be at one with god,” said council chairman Abdul Shukor Husin.
It is not necessary for Muslims to do yoga to relax, the council argues, they can pray to reach that state.
The edict is controversial in Malaysia, whose nine sultans constitute the country’s supreme religious authority.
Sharafuddin Idrish Shah, the sultan of Selangor state, criticized the council, saying its members should have consulted the sultans before issuing the fatwa.
For non-Muslim yoga teachers, the whole controversy is even less understandable.
“The issue came up out of the blue,” said Hoo, who was been running his yoga studio for four years. “Our classes are for fitness.”
Chanting mantras for him was just about the sound of vibration that cleanses the body and affects the mind and energy, a good way to relax one’s mind, he said.
Still, Hoo now leaves out the mantras in beginner’s classes, in case Muslims felt uncomfortable about them.
Ninety percent of Malaysia’s yoga practitioners are ethnic Chinese and Indians, and there is no indication that Muslims doing yoga have deserted their faith.
But Delilah said she knew some Muslims who have given up on yoga’s more meditative aspects after the fatwa. But all in all, yoga teachers are convinced that the activity’s popularity will grow further.
Ahmad thinks the whole controversy did one thing — stoke the interest in yoga among Malaysia’s Muslims and a huge market may open up.
Delilah goes to her yoga classes two or three times a week. “I believe in common sense and follow my own conscience,” she said.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby