Saudi Arabia embraces yoga in pivot towards ‘moderation’
JEDDAH: In a sparse, woodfloored studio, Saudi women squat, lunge and do headstands. Even a year ago, teaching these yoga postures could have rendered them outlaws in the conservative Islamic kingdom.
Widely perceived as a Hindu spiritual practice, yoga was not officially permitted for decades in Saudi Arabia, the cradle of Islam where all non-muslim worship is banned.
But with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman vowing an “open, moderate Islam”, the kingdom last November recognised yoga as a sport amid a new liberalisation drive that has sidelined religious hardliners.
Spearheading efforts to normalise yoga in the kingdom is Nouf Marwaai, a
Saudi woman who has battled insults and threats from extremists to challenge the notion that yoga is incompatible with Islam.
“I have been harassed, (and) sent a lot of hate messages,” said the 38-year-old head of the Arab Yoga Foun- dation, which has trained hundreds of yoga instructors in the kingdom.
“Five years ago, this (teaching yoga) would have been impossible,” added Marwaai, as she began training a cluster of women students at a private studio in Jeddah.
In a country where women have long been denied the right to exercise publicly, the students — some of whom regularly attend yoga retreats in India — said the exercise had transformed their lives.
Ayat Samman, a 32-year- old health educator, said yoga helped alleviate her lifelong struggle with fibromyalgia, a chronic pain disorder that often left her bedridden. Yoga also works as therapy, the women said, helping them vent bottled up emotions and tackle a woefully common ailment -- depression.
In just a few months since yoga’s recognition, a new industry of yoga studios and instructors has sprouted in various Saudi cities. That includes Mecca and Medina, Islam’s holiest cities, Marwaai said.