When fatwa meets yoga, tourism wins

The Indonesian island of Bali has big dreams to become a world capital of spiritual tourism. But that required ignoring the religious edict issued by the country’s top Islamic body last week. The Council of Ulemas issued a Fatwa against yoga. Awkward, since Bali had planned to host an international yoga conference.

What ever to do? Not much of a question there, it seems. Yoga! The conference went off as planned, finishing up today, with even the island’s governor attending. 

Praise be to tourism, the payoffs from Bali’s yoga drive could be big. Wayan Wijayasa of the Denpasar Tourism Academy in Bali told local press that if just one percent of U.S. “yogis” visited Bali a year, it would mean 160,000 yoga tourists in the country. That’s big dough if you consider that Americans spent $2.95 billion on yoga equipment presumably last year, according to Wijayasa.

Monetary gains aside, yoga is popular in Bali. So that must be what Hillary Clinton meant when she said, “If you want to know if Islam, democracy, modernity and women’s rights can coexist, go to Indonesia.” That should ceratinly be worth a few sun salutations.

See also, FP‘s list of the all-time stupidest fatwas.

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