Jakarta – Indonesia's largest Muslim organisation has attacked a move by the country's highest Islamic authority to impose bans on smoking, practising yoga and voting abstention.
A 'fatwa' or a religious edict was issued by the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) during its two-day national meeting in the West Sumatran town of Padangpanjang at the weekend.
Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Indonesia's biggest Islamic organisation, criticised the religious edicts as "excessive".
NU deputy head Masdar F. Mas'udi said the MUI should not have inserted religion into the three matters. Yoga, as it is practised in Indonesia, he said, was a pastime and must not be seen in the context of religious worship.
He said that the MUI should not use "Islamic law" as a tool to discourage people from smoking.
"What's important is to inform the public of the bad effects of smoking and urge the government to enforce policies to discourage smoking," Masdar told the Indonesian daily The Jakarta Post.
He also said the MUI should "not bring in God and threaten people with hell" if it wanted to encourage Muslims to vote.
Some 700 clerics from the council agreed on Sunday that Muslims were forbidden to abstain from voting in elections if "qualified" candidates existed.
"Islam obliges Muslims to elect their leaders if the latter meet certain criteria," Gusrizal Gazahar, MUI West Sumatra head, said after the meeting.
The criteria include "being Muslim, honest, brilliant and ready to fight for the people", the council said.
It also forbade smoking by children and pregnant women, and in public places.
Muslims are also banned from practising certain aspects of yoga that contained Hindu elements such as chanting and meditation, it said. But Muslims can continue to perform yoga for purely health reasons, the council added.
Muslim scholar Azyumardi Azra also attacked the yoga ban as "excessive" and "counterproductive". However, he lauded the edicts against vote abstention and smoking, saying the former was "positive" in strengthening democracy and elected administrations.
Azyumardi, an assistant to vice president Jusuf Kalla, said the MUI had "compromised" and taken "accommodating" measures to partly forbid smoking, considering the fact that the tobacco industry employed so many workers and contributed much to the country's economy.
The edict also included a ban on abortion unless the mother is a rape victim, the pregnancy endangers her life, or the foetus is aged less than five weeks old, as well as a ban on vasectomy because the process is "irreversible".
A ban on marriage with minors, based on a 1974 law that forbids men under 19 and women under 16 years old from marriage was also issued by the council.