YOGA AND THE FIRST LADY

WIE has learned that the First Lady is an avid practitioner of hatha yoga. No, not Laura Bush—we’re talking about the First Lady of Egypt, Suzanne Mubarak, wife of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. In fact, the list of prominent Egyptian citizens who have taken up the practice of yoga is an extensive one, combining the directory of government ministers (and their spouses) with a veritable who’s who of Egyptian economics and culture.

It all started in 1992 when the Indian embassy in Cairo opened a cultural center complete with a resident expert on hatha yoga, Dr. Prabhakar Madhikar. It was a hit from the start, yet the religious authorities got alarmed: Eastern religion taught in an Islamic country? Allah forbid. But once the Islamic leadership had been reassured that the purpose of all this twisting, bending, and stretching was not conversion to Hinduism but simply health improvement, the storm settled and the yogi got busy, leading three sessions a day for forty to sixty people each, with private VIP sessions to boot. To this day, interest remains high.

Nevertheless, the relationship between yoga and Islam in Egypt is more of an edgy truce than it is a peaceful coexistence. Case in point: about a year ago, a TV yoga program by one of Madhikar’s first Egyptian students, Guru Wafaa, aired on Egypt’s Channel 2, was stopped after the Grand Mufti of Egypt issued a fatwa (legal pronouncement) against it. After the prohibition sparked massive protests by viewers and the press—even the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia was opposed to the fatwa—the TV station put Guru Wafaa back in front of the camera, and her program is now being broadcast on the prestigious Channel 1. Eventually, even the Mufti of Egypt reconsidered and gave the green light. So for the moment, at least, yoga’s future in Egypt looks bright.

GODCASTING IN THE NEW AGE

These days, many spiritual and religious groups are minimizing their dependence on printed material as a means of spreading the Word in favor of more modern technologies. The U.S. Baha’i community, for example, has recently launched a new comprehensive website, www.bahai.us, which represents its first step “towards employing online media as a primary channel for publishing and broadcasting Baha’i related content in the United States.” The Baha’i website will also utilize the buzz technology of our time—podcasts (downloadable, subscription-based audio programs for your iPod).

Although our spell checker, which is less than a year old, still considers podcasting a spelling mistake, the technology is actually so prevalent among religious groups that a new term has been coined for it: Godcasting. And everybody’s doing it: Jewish rabbis, Christian preachers, Buddhist teachers, New Age gurus, Muslim imams, and Hare Krishnas. Even Pope Benedict XVI is getting in on the action, having started recording his very own Godcasts last August.

Boy, have we come a long way since Moses’ stone tablets.

PLURALISM, ANYONE?

Islamic liberals have always claimed that fundamentalist Islam’s fear of “foreign influences” is, in fact, foreign to the spirit of Islam. One vocal exponent of this argument is Pakistani-American writer and social critic Dr. Munawar Anees (see “What Future for Muslim Identity?” WIE, May–July 2004). As Anees reminds his listeners and readers, in medieval Spain during the golden age of Islam, Jews, Christians, and Muslims had a mutually enriching relationship, cross-fertilizing each other’s cultures and thought.

A Muslim with broad interests who was trained as a scientist in the West, Anees passionately wants to revive that spirit of cultural enrichment that gave rise to one of the most productive and creative eras in medieval history. To that end, he is on a crusade (oops!) to raise funds for a new quarterly magazine called Convivencia, a Spanish word meaning “coexistence” that also happens to be the name by which this unique period of cooperation is known. The magazine will focus on various topics: bioethics in a global context, Islam and the West, science and religion, Islam’s future in a globalized world, and more.

Anees, of course, is perfectly suited to the task, having founded and edited some of the most prestigious scholarly publications in the Muslim world. Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, he is a courageous critic of Islamic fundamentalism and a staunch advocate of cultural pluralism.

CHOPRA BRINGS BUDDHA TO HOLLYWOOD

The use of celluloid to transmit eternal truths is as old as the movie industry itself, yet Hollywood seems to be scratching its head to understand—and capitalize on—the recent success of spiritual movies. The popularity of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was the first surprise, waking up industry execs to a market hungry for religious films. But the real jaw dropper was the grassroots film What the Bleep Do We Know!?, which was all the rage among spiritual-but-not-religious folk, grossing $12 million and giving rise to a sequel and a whole cottage industry of books, study groups, and all manner of What the Bleep!? merchandise.

Tinseltown, recognizing it was clearly out of its depth, asked the advice of Deepak Chopra, the man with the Midas touch. Chopra not only suggested filming an adaptation of one of his own forty-six bestselling books, How to Know God, but went to his own back yard—or, rather, his living room—to recruit the talent. With a script cowritten by his son Gotham and his daughter Mallika, the movie should hit theaters this year. But that’s just the warm-up. Now Chopra is collaborating with ER director Babu Subramaniam on a movie based on his book Soulmate, which will draw upon both Hollywood and Bollywood talent. And in a marriage made in Twentieth Century Fox heaven, Chopra hooked up with maverick film director and fellow Indian Shekhar Kapur, of Elizabeth and Bandit Queen fame, to cowrite a movie about the Buddha’s early years. Aptly named Buddha, the movie takes advantage of the fact that because so little is known about the time leading up to the Buddha’s enlightenment, Chopra and Kapur were free to mix as much sex and violence into the story as they saw fit.

Sex and violence in a movie about the world’s greatest anchorite? “Our goal was to make a movie popular enough to inspire every sixteen-year-old girl in Montana to seek enlightenment,” says Chopra. Apparently, he even got the Dalai Lama to give his blessings. “I told him that some of the scenes would not be to his liking, but he didn’t mind,” Chopra says. “The Dalai Lama is a lot more liberal than most people think.”

CHURCHES, SYNAGOGUES, AND . . . FENWAY PARK?

If Hollywood doesn’t exactly know how to walk in the footsteps of What the Bleep!?, some independent filmmakers sure do. Joel Leskowitz, a meditation teacher turned film producer, has teamed up with his cousin, Harvard psychiatrist Eric Leskowitz, to produce The Joy of Sox: Weird Science and the Power of Attention, a movie about the religious experiences people have while watching the Red Sox play baseball at Boston’s Fenway Park. “People falling to their knees in the middle of the aisles,” explains one fan. “Complete strangers jumping into my arms . . . I’ve seen more people having religious experiences than in any church I’ve ever been to in my life.” Adds another: “I think everyone says a little prayer before we come in. It’s just an awesome feeling when you come into Fenway. It’s awesome. No other way to explain it.”

The Leskowitz cousins are also interviewing serious physicists, physicians, and spiritual authorities for the film, asking questions like: “Is Fenway Park a sacred space?” “Can sports help us grow spiritually?” and the big one, “Can fans’ prayers affect the outcome of a game?” Mind-body physician Larry Dossey, for one, gives a definite “yes.” Still being shot as these words go to press, The Joy of Sox is scheduled to be finished by this summer. It’s too early to tell whether or not it will be as big as What the Bleep!?, but one way or the other, it’s guaranteed to make you smile.