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Muslim Practicing Yoga – Please Don’t Raise the Eyebrow

Muslim practicing yoga is news because yoga is a sin against Islam. It is blasphemous. The bigger picture is often ignored. When Yoga was first practiced there was no religion in the world. Educated modern people have forcefully thrust the idea of religion into Yoga. Yoga does not teach religion. Yoga is for the welfare of all living beings. Yoga only helps in maintaining a healthy body and healthy mind.

Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism) is not sectarian. All it says is that Truth is one and there are several paths to realize Truth. Teachings of Santana Dharma focus on individual’s efforts to have a peaceful and happy coexistence with nature. Yoga is a path just a path. 

Shutting out Yoga just because the great minds that discovered Yoga and propagated them in modern day is associated with a particular religion is narrow mindedness. Yoga is not going to gain or lose anything if Muslims practice Yoga. But people lose a lot of good things in life by ignoring Yoga.

New York Times reports about Muslims Practicing Yoga 
Mr. Rashid, a Muslim, said he had long believed that practicing yoga was tantamount to “denouncing my religion.”

“Yoga is not for Muslims,” he said. “It was forbidden.”

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 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 meditationlike centering of focus and several kneeling bows, he felt there were echoes of yogic poses.

“I discovered whatever I’m doing in yoga, I’m doing five times a day in prayer,” said Mr. Rashid, who is from Dhaka, Bangladesh