International Yoga Festival Opens in Bali Despite a ‘fatwa’ Against The Exercise

by dailymuscle on March 4, 2009

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JAKARTA - AN EIGHT-DAY international yoga festival opened on Tuesday on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali despite a fatwa against the exercise from the country’s top Muslim body.

Organisers said seminars and workshops would help introduce yoga to a wider audience and rejected the clerics’ concerns that some forms of the popular exercise were a threat to Islam.

‘The festival has a universal value. It doesn’t belong to any religious teachings,’ International Bali-India Yoga Festival spokeswoman Susi Andrini told AFP.

I’m glad that the organizers to the event had the balls courage to go ahead with DOING THE RIGHT THING, and creating awareness on the benefits of Yoga as an exercise - despite of the baseless claims from certain parties.

Read the full story HERE.

Bali boleh!

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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

1 River of Karma 03.04.09 at 3:55 pm

Look at the carefully crafted response line

‘The festival has a universal value. It doesn’t belong to any religious teachings,’

She stopped short of saying yoga isnt religious, instead focusing on the “festival”. That’s good PR for you.

Cheers,
RoK

2 dailymuscle 03.06.09 at 2:09 am

Indeed - that takes such skill, which unfortunately, I am hopeless at! I even turned down a phone interview from BBC during the whole Yoga Fatwa Incident thingy - didn’t want to be misquoted and end up in prison under the ISA.

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