Saudi Arabia embraces yoga in push for moderation
Jeddah: In a sparse, wood-floored 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 38year-old head of the Arab Yoga Foundation, which has trained hundreds of local yoga instructors.
“Five years ago, this would have been impossible,” added Nouf, as she began training a cluster of women students at a private studio in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.
Hanging up their abayas and headscarves, they stretched in unison in an arching warrior pose known as virabhadrasana. Arms outstretched, their bodies folded into a 180° backward bending posture known as chakrasana or wheel pose.
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, Nouf said.
Prince Mohammed, the de facto ruler, has sought to project a moderate image of the kingdom, long associated with a fundamentalist strain of Wahhabi Islam, with a new push for inter-religious exchange.
Saudi Arabia in recent months has hosted officials linked to the Vatican, and the prince also met a group of Roman Catholic and Jewish leaders in New York earlier this year in a rare inter-faith gesture.
For decades, Saudi rulers derived much of their legitimacy from their alliance with a clerical establishment that pushed a puritanical vision of Islam.
But the prince appears to have upturned the system, seeking instead to tap support from the kingdom’s swelling youth base through a surge of nationalism and a much-hyped modernisation drive.
Saudi columnists have openly called for abolishing the once-feared religious police as the kingdom introduces entertainment, including mixed-gender concerts, and re-opens cinemas after a decades-long ban.
Prominent hardline Salafist cler- ics with millions of followers on social media have been jailed, with some on death row, as the crown prince clamps down on dissent.
Yoga is still regarded as a deviant practice in conservative circles, sometimes associated with witchcraft, and Nouf’s students are often accused of betraying their religion.
“I receive messages on social media asking: ‘Are you a Hindu? Did you turn into a Hindu?’” said Budur al-Hamoud, a recruitment specialist.
“Yoga has nothing to do with religion. It’s a sport ... it does not interfere with my faith.”
Yoga is seen at odds with several other faiths, but the recognition of the practice in Saudi Arabia – the epicentre of the Islamic world – appears to have given a new impetus to Muslim yoga practitioners around the world.
Nouf is taking on conservatives not just in the kingdom but also in India, the birthplace of yoga where clerics last year slapped a fatwa, or religious edict, against a female Muslim yoga teacher just days before the kingdom recognised the sport.
In a shrill Indian television debate, Nouf – a lupus survivor and recently awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian honours – calmly sought to reason with Muslim clerics who hurled insults at her.
The clerics were particularly opposed to Surya Namaskar, a yoga sequence designed to greet Surya, the Hindu sun god, and the chanting of Hindu mantras.
“It is not the worshipping of the sun and the moon,” she responded as tempers frayed, denying they engaged in chanting.
Unconvinced, a cleric said the set of physical movements in the Muslim prayer ritual offered enough exercise.
The slow meditation does not increase the metabolic rate, Nouf retorted, adding: “Prophet Mohammed used to race with his wife.” — AFP
Yoga has nothing to do with religion. It’s a sport ... it does not interfere with my faith. Budur al-Hamoud