The banning of Zumba dance exercise by Iranian authorities has grabbed headlines worldwide. Authorities in the Islamic Republic condemned the popular fitness classes for women as “contravening Islamic ideology,” and the head of the country’s sports federation declared that the dangerous Latin movements of the Colombia-originated exercise craze are “not legal in any shape or title.”
But Tehran-based cleric Hossain Ghayyomi was quoted by the LA Times as explaining to the objectors that Zumba fell under the rubric of dancing, not exercise.
He said that under Islam, “any harmonious movement or rhythmic exercise, if it is for pleasure seeking, is haram (forbidden),” and “even jobs related to these rhythmic movements are haram. For instance, since Islam says dancing or music is haram, then renting a place to teach dancing or cutting wood to make musical instruments is haram too.” [...]
Four years ago, the rabbinical court judge of the Ashkenazi community in Betar Ilit issued an edict explicitly forbidding Zumba “after having established that, both in form and manner, the activity is totally at odds with both the ways of the Torah and the holiness of Israel, as are the songs associated to it. I hereby announce that the organization and participation in such classes is forbidden.” [...]
Ultra-Orthodox objections with the Zumba craze haven’t been restricted to the Middle East. In 2013, Rabbi Zecharia Wallerstein, founder and director of Ohr Naava – a New York-area Women’s Torah Center – took to the pulpit to preach against it as a slippery slope to sinful behavior. Respectable Jewish women, he said, were not meant to gyrate to “goyish provocative” music and “dance like an animal” or “monkeys in the jungle” to “Latin garbage.”
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