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PAS research chief Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad told The Malaysian Insider that the council should not make a blanket ban but “lay down what is or is not permissible about yoga.”

“This allows a Muslim to be critical of their own faith and empower them to make judgments based on convictions.”

The Kuala Selangor MP added that if the intention of taking up yoga was for the well-being of the body, mind and spirit, then religion need not come into it.

“There is no need for this siege mentality where everything is viewed from the perspective of encroaching on Islam and attacking us,” he said, adding that if one wanted to stray from Islam, there were other ways besides yoga to do it.

PKR Youth’s chief strategist Yusmadi Yusoff also said that the council needed to be more specific with what forms of yoga it found objectionable as generalising the entire art under a ban was discriminatory and denied Muslims a choice of a healthy lifestyle.

“The form of yoga practised in Malaysia is simply a healthy exercise. If the fatwa is on the basis of religious rituals or inclinations, then it must be more specific and detail what parts exactly,” he said.

The Balik Pulau MP also noted that other martial arts, including those in Malay culture, had religious inclination but were not banned outright and doing so, as with yoga, would sacrifice a lot of benefits as a physical and mental form of exercise.

The National Fatwa Council, the country’s top Islamic body, today ruled against Muslims practising yoga, saying it has elements of other religions that could corrupt Muslims as it includes Hindu spiritual elements of chanting and worship.

Though the council’s decisions are not legally binding on Malaysia’s Muslim population, many abide by the edicts out of deference, and the council does have the authority to ostracise an offending Muslim from society.

This has come after it recently banned Muslim women from “tomboy” behavior, ruling that girls who act like boys violate the tenets of Islam. The majority of yoga practitioners in Malaysia are female.

Both Dzulkefly and Yusmadi, however, believe that the fatwas did not reflect gender discrimination against female Muslims as claimed by women’s group Sisters in Islam.

Dzulkefly said that it was wrong in principle for women to behave like men or men to behave like women and the earlier fatwa presented a set of guidelines rather than a ban on an entire artform.

Sisters in Islam programme manager Norhayati Kaprawi also came out strongly against the fatwa, calling it the latest in a regressive trend for the country’s multiculturalism.

“There has been no report or complaint of any practitioner converting to Hinduism or that yoga has caused a Muslim’s faith to weaken,” she added.

The spokesperson for the Muslim women’s group said that many Muslims have been practising yoga for decades but no one has seen it as a religious matter up to now.

She said that there was no need to be suspicious of other religions and that these presumptions were the cause of the edict.

“When you come up with a national ruling, there must first be evidence of a problem. This is all based on negative presumptions.

“Any activity done with bad intentions can lead to negative implications,” she said, in refuting council chairman Datuk Dr Abdul Shukor Husin’s statement that the physical aspect of yoga should be avoided by Muslims as “doing one thing could lead to another.”

Several Muslims have also expressed consternation with the edict.

The Associated Press reported that yoga teacher Suleiha Merican, who has been practising yoga for 40 years, called yoga “a great health science” and there is no religion involved.

“We don’t do chanting and meditation. There is no conflict because yoga is not religion based,” Suleiha, 56, had said.

Putri Rahim, a housewife, said she is no less a Muslim after practising yoga for 10 years.

“I am mad! Maybe they have it in mind that Islam is under threat. To come out with a fatwa is an insult to intelligent Muslims. It’s an insult to my belief,” Putri told AP.

In a recent blog posting, social activist Datin Marina Mahathir criticised the council for even considering a yoga ban, calling it “a classic case of reacting out of fear and ignorance.”

Sharizal Shaarani, an executive told The Malaysian Insider that he could not see how yoga could affect a Muslim’s relationship with God.

“It is a petty thing. There are more important fatwas like on corruption for the council to address,” he said, adding that as practising yoga did not adversely affect the lives of others, others should not impose a set of values on the practitioners.