Yoga Ban

I am sure just about everybody in Malaysia has heard of the recent fatwa on Yoga as this topic has been headlining the news papers for the past couple of days. To be honest, I wanted to avoid the whole political fiasco as this is a fitness blog. But since the lines between these 2 unrelated fields (well at least I thought it was unrelated until now) have been blurred, why not.

My sincere thoughts… I think this ruling is “riddiculous”, for lack of a better term to call this. Why?

1) Honestly… how many people have deviated from Islam because of practicing Yoga? If the person is going to deviate and / or convert, believe me yoga will not be their reason for doing so. So what’s the big fuss.
2) How are these people planning on enforcing this? Will there be a police man at every gym and yoga center? Tell me? Wouldn’t the time and resources of the police be better spent on the street stopping snatch thieves and murederers?
3) Granted, yoga does have some religious elements and roots to it, but in most parts, its meant to help improve health. There are different segments of Yoga and depending on which one you choose to do, you can choose the non spiritual ones which is purely for health and fitness. In fact I don’t think there is any gym which offers the spiritual segment of Yoga. You only get to learn about this from places such as Temple of Fine Arts and other similar religious organizations.
4) Where do we draw the line of this absurdity and bans? Will there be a fatwa on attending weddings in churches, temples etc? Maybe we should all just stick to our little religious colonies and not interact with any other races of religion. The govt talks of racial untiy… how does this even promote that? Isn’t it exactly contradictary? Maybe we should also ban any show that shows a church, a priest of another religion… because hey… who knows, I might get tempted to deviate watching how cool it is on TV.
5) On a philosophical note, religion is a personal thing between you and God. We don’t need police or enforcers playing demi gods or the level between man on God. The way I see it, the more you try to clamp down, the more people will try to rebel and deviate from it… hence making it counter productive as well.
6) I think we are all adults here and should be treated as one. We don’t need this riddiculous supervision as if we are babies who just can’t wait to raid the cookie jar.

By listing down my opinion and thoughts on this matter, please note that I am not in any way trying to put down Islam or Muslims. Please do not get me wrong. I just think this particular fatwa does not make sense and should be removed. In fact all my Muslim friends have also shared their disatisfaction with this fatwa and most of them call it ridicolous as well.

So there you have it… my thoughts on why this is ruling is absurd and should be abolished. Would love to hear thoughts and comments on this.