NEW YORK, NEW YORK, April 7, 2012 (NY Times): Mr. Rashid, a Muslim, said he had long believed that practicing yoga was tantamount to “denouncing my religion.” But after moving to New York in 1997 from Bahrain, he slowly began to rethink his stance. Now Mr. Rashid, 56, has come full circle: not only has he adopted yoga into his daily routine, but he has also encouraged other Muslims to do so — putting himself squarely against those who consider yoga a sin against Islam.
When Mr. Rashid, who also tutors children, had his students learn yoga to help improve their concentration, three Muslim students quit after a few yoga sessions, he said, in part, he believed, because of their families’ stance toward the practice. “I am putting them in something extra that is not in the Muslim religion,” he said. “The parents did not accept it.”
Four years ago, a council of Malaysian Muslim clerics issued a fatwa against yoga, declaring it haram, or forbidden by Islamic law. The ruling followed similar edicts in Egypt and Singapore, where one of the earliest bans was issued in the early 1980s.
The fatwas typically cited the Sanskrit chants that often flowed through yoga sessions and which are considered Hindu prayer by some Muslims. According to “Yoga in the Hindu Scriptures” by H. Kumar Kaul, yogic principles were first described in the Vedas, the Sanskrit scriptures that form the backbone of Hinduism, and are considered to be over 10,000 years old.
It did not go unnoticed when Mohd A. Qayyoom, an imam who runs the Muhammadi Community Center of Jackson Heights, joined a yoga demonstration at an interfaith festival in Jackson Heights last summer. But Imam Qayyoom said he had come to believe that Islam and yoga could be compatible — if the Sanskrit benedictions are left out, he said, and women’s skin-tight yoga gear is traded for more conservative garments. “Reformed, it will be more popular” among Muslims, he said. “It will not contradict with Islamic religion.”
When Mr. Rashid finally took up yoga, he said there were more similarities with his faith than contradictions. In salat, the five-times daily Muslim prayers, which entail a meditation-like centering of focus and several kneeling bows, he felt there were echoes of yogic poses.