Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Monday, May 27, 2019

Iran: No Yoga

The morality police are again active. This one sounds like an act of private revenge.

Iran police arrest 30 at private yoga class

Thirty people taking part in a yoga session have been arrested during a private class in Iran, reports suggest, causing a buzz across the country's social media.

They were detained at a private residence in the northern city of Gorgan, where they were apparently taking part in a mixed class.

Local justice department official Massoud Soleimani said the instructor, who was also arrested, had no licence to run the class and had advertised the event on Instagram.

He also said that those taking part were wearing "inappropriate outfits" and had "behaved inappropriately", the Tasnim news agency reports.

The Islamic establishment in Iran does not allow any mixed-gender sports activities.

Professional-level yoga teaching is also banned in the country.

Mr Soleimani, the deputy chief of the Islamic Revolution Court in Gorgan which is the capital of Golestan Province, did not give any more details about the attire or behaviour of the detained group.

He did say that security forces had been monitoring the residence for some time before making the arrests…

In 2017, Iranian sports authorities issued a ban on Colombian dance aerobics exercise zumba and "any harmonious movement or body-shaking instruction".

Back then Iran's Sport for All Federation penned a letter to Iran's Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports to ban activities, including zumba, for contravening "Islamic ideology".

While there have have been public gatherings of yoga fans in the country over the past few years, "underground" and "unIslamic" classes, which are promoted across social media, are frowned upon…