{"id":5853,"date":"2019-06-04T13:47:04","date_gmt":"2019-06-04T13:47:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/test\/2019\/06\/04\/arrestyougapracticingdicipline\/"},"modified":"2022-09-26T18:03:46","modified_gmt":"2022-09-26T17:03:46","slug":"arrestyougapracticingdicipline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/arrestyougapracticingdicipline\/","title":{"rendered":"Arrest for Practicing \u201cIndecent\u201d Discipline of Yoga"},"content":{"rendered":"

That people attend small, private sessions to avoid being discovered and prosecuted by the authorities.<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

CHRI<\/span><\/strong> -After 30 people were arrested for practicing yoga inside a home in the Iranian city of Gorgan, several individuals based in the country told the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) that the arrests are not uncommon but rarely publicly acknowledged by officials.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this case, the assistant prosecutor of Golestan Province told the state-funded Tasnim News Agency that 30 unidentified men and women in \u201cinappropriate clothing\u201d were arrested at the home of a person who will be prosecuted for allowing unlicensed yoga to occur there.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA person posted an ad on social media [Instagram] about teaching yoga to women and men at his home that led to the discovery of a series of contacts,\u201d said Masoud Soleimani on May 22, 2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis individual did not have a license for a sports club and held his yoga classes in a private residence where women and men wore inappropriate clothing and engaged in indecent activities,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

The official added: \u201cAfter monitoring their movements, agents today arrested about 30 women and women in very inappropriate clothing at a home whose owner has been delivered to judicial authorities to be prosecuted for breaking the law.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A women\u2019s rights activist told CHRI that the government \u201crarely\u201d allows people to officially practice yoga so fans of the ancient Hindu discipline resort to doing it in secret.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey are very suspicious of yoga and rarely issue permits for holding classes,\u201d said the activist who requested anonymity for security reasons.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cInstead, individuals have to seek a license under the guise of different sports in order to offer yoga,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another individual who practices yoga in Tehran told CHRI that people attend small, private sessions to avoid being discovered and prosecuted by the authorities.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although yoga is growing increasingly popular in Iran, the government and religious leaders regard it as a violation of Shia Islamic morals.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since he was appointed as the country\u2019s supreme leader in 1989, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has denounced various private lifestyle choices \u2013including listening to or playing western music or watching foreign films\u2013as evidence of the West’s \u201ccultural invasion\u201d in Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That people attend small, private sessions to avoid being discovered and prosecuted by the authorities.<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6196,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-iran-fa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6486,"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5853\/revisions\/6486"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panahandenews.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}