This article was originally published on islamsperspective.blogspot.com
On 29th November 2008, Irfan Husain wrote a column published in Daily Dawn discussing a Malaysian scholar's fatwa that 'yoga' should be prohibited for Muslims. Abdul Shukor Husin, the chairman of Malaysia's National Fatwa Council, issued a fatwa in which he considers the spiritual elements of yoga to be in contradiction with Islam. He opined that doing yoga has been practiced by the Hindu community for thousands of years and incorporates physical and religious elements, chants and worshipping, with the aim of "being one with God."
The fatwa caused a fuss in the International media. In a week's time our intellectuals also found it worthy to shed some ink on the matter. Irfan Husain's article discusses the fatwa, but neither from a religious point of view nor from a spiritual one. Rather, it starts with a personal anecdote which is meant to establish the medical benefits of yoga, as if the scholars had denied any of them, or as if these benefits can be acquired exclusively through yoga.
Though the author admits that he is unqualified to challenge these fatwas, this doesn't hinder him from doing so. As the author doesn't even bother to discuss which evidences from Quran and Sunnah the scholars used to issue the edicts, I will not focus on the fatwa itself. However, it is still worthwhile mentioning that both fatwas — whether someone agrees or disagrees — are well grounded in Quran and Sunnah. The first fatwa is based firstly on the sharai principle that anything leading to haram becomes itself haram. Secondly, as yoga is something that emanates from another religion, the general Islamic principle is the prohibition to imitate or adopt such rituals.
This brings me to my first objection: would the author challenge some new research appearing in a medical journal about a disease by quoting his family's experiences with that disease? Of course not — to counter a scientific study, we all recognize the need to bring even stronger evidences within the given scientific framework. So why is the wider Muslim community so silent about these and similar articles on matters that require robust Islamic discourse and not anecdotal shallow commentary?
My second objection is related to the author playing with semantics. Is he too naive to know that the term yoga refers to a composite set of actions and ideas which have a specific origin and context attached to it? Does he seriously believe that a practicing Hindu, Christian or Jew would take up the Muslim prayer (Salah) as an exercise for the body and soul because of its physical component?
To many, yoga might seem an issue not worthwhile discussing with such seriousness. The point is that the issue here is not yoga — rather it is firstly the fact that our intellectuals, by pointing out Islamic opinions on such issues and dealing with them without due diligence, are doing no service to either Islam or intellectual discourse. Secondly, exactly due to such an attitude we have today accepted concepts, solutions and systems which are in no way reconcilable with Islam. Two examples of such concepts adopted by Muslims on equally shallow argumentation are democracy and nation-states.
Clearly the colonial occupation was not merely of the lands physically, but of the people intellectually — and bringing forward correct ideas is the only cure for this intellectual slavery.
