Balinese Defy Fatwa for Yoga Festival

(Bali, Indonesia) Yesterday, the International Yoga Festival opened on the Indonesian resort island of Bali despite the issuance of a nation-wide fatwa against yoga by the nation's top Muslim clerics.

Organisers said seminars and workshops would help introduce yoga to a wider audience and rejected the clerics' concerns that some forms of the popular exercise were a threat to Islam.

"The festival has a universal value. It doesn't belong to any religious teachings," International Bali-India Yoga Festival spokeswoman Susi Andrini said. [...]

But the Indonesian Council of Ulemas, the top religious body in the mainly Muslim country, issued a fatwa in January banning Indonesian Muslims from all forms of yoga that involve Hindu religious rituals such as chanting mantras. [...]

Religious edicts issued by the ulemas are not legally binding on Muslims but it is considered sinful to ignore them.

Andrini said organisers were not afraid to hold the festival at the Bajrasandi Bali Monument in Denpasar -- the capital of the Hindu-majority island of Bali -- despite the fatwa. [my bold]

This is the first time I've heard that a fatwa can be ignored.