The religious order banning women from dressing like tomboys was bad enough. But the fatwa by this country's leading clerics against yoga was the last straw.

"They have never even done yoga," said Zainah Anwar, a founder of a Malaysian women's rights group called Sisters in Islam.

Anwar argues that the edict, issued late last year by the National Fatwa Council of Malaysia, is pure patriarchy. Islam, she says, is only a cover.

It was frustrations like those that drew several hundred Muslim women to a conference in this Muslim-majority country over the weekend. Their mission was to come up with ways to demand equal rights for women. And their tools, however unlikely, were the tenets of Islam itself.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Women • * International News & Commentary • Asia • Malaysia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

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