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Bored with targeting Jews and Americans, Muslim council issues fatwa on yoga
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Mickey, too, was the subject of a fatwa (AP/FoxNews)
I suppose being a Christian westerner finds me lacking in the ways of the fatwa. Nothing says ignorance of the Great Satan like being a tax-drained citizen of the Great Satan.
As an Irish-Protestant, the only fatwa I’ve ever declared was on a 12-pack of Guinness.
Fatwas – for those of you who skipped Radical Islam 101 – are calls for death sentences (or declarations of war) for people, places and things that purportedly violate one of the many interpretations of Islamic law (or Sharia, if you prefer).
Fatwas are also defined as answers to questions when there is doubt on whether or not a particular practice is permissible in Islam.
Perhaps we could cut down on the number of fatwas issued if we could agree on one universal definition?
Among the more infamous fatwas were Osama Bin Laden legitimizing attacks on American citizens and the one declared by Ayatollah Khomeini on author Salman Rushdie.
Recently, however, the tones of the ‘death sentences’ have taken on a decidedly less-serious nature.
A Saudi cleric issued a fatwa on birthday parties (they’re an innovation and people do not need innovations); Pakistani radicals issued one for President Zardari’s flirtatious interaction with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (for indecent gestures and praise of a non-Muslim woman wearing a short skirt); and the breast feeding fatwa, where the Islamic restriction on unmarried men and women sharing the workplace would be lifted if the woman – in an effort to ‘establish family ties’ – breast fed her male colleagues five times.
Insert your own babes-in-the-office joke here.
Now it’s the Indonesian Council of Ulemas – the leading religious body in the majority Muslim country – that has issued the latest second-tier fatwa: banning Muslims from all forms of yoga, particularly those that involve Hindu rituals such as chanting.
I’ll admit to an awareness of the natural laws being violated by large, contorting men in spandex, but was totally blind-sided by the evil connotations accompanying the word ‘ohm.’
A visit to the Fatwa Islam website will provide you with the list of the 50 most recent fatwas, among which are the improper disposal of papers with Allah written on them; whistling and clapping as inappropriate actions for Muslims; whether or not you can donate money obtained from the sale of cigarettes and drugs to charity; and my personal favorite: a ruling on whether or not a man can take a fifth wife if one of the first four are deemed to be afflicted by mental illness.
Five wives? Makes me think that hubby is most in need of that psychological evaluation.
Now, who among us is going to risk a personal fatwa by telling these radical Muslims that as they take to their knees facing Mecca, they are unwittingly performing the second posture of child’s pose?
Ooops.
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