Kuwait banned women in order to make yoga retreat this month, and conservatives stated it an assault on Islam. Lawmakers and clerics were tensed about the “danger” and depravity of women doing the lotus position and downward dog in public, ultimately convincing authorities to ban the trip.

The ban of toga by Kuwait is the latest flashpoint in a long-running culture war over women’s behaviour in the sheikhdom, where tribes and Islamists wield growing power over a divided society.

Traditional politicians push back against a burgeoning feminist movement, and they consider yoga to unravel Kuwait’s traditional values.

According to the feminist activist ‘Najeeba Hayat’, our state is backsliding and regressing at a rate that we have not seen before. Women ran into the park along the palm-studded strand, chanting into the chilly night air for freedoms they added the authorities have steadily stifled.

For Kuwaitis, it is a disturbing trend in the nation that once prided itself on its progressivism approximated to its Gulf Arab neighbours.

However, women have made strides across the conservative Arabian Peninsula in recent years. Women have won greater freedoms in long-insular Saudi Arabia under de-facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Earlier, Saudi Arabia also hosted its first open-air yoga festival in January, and Kuwaitis called it irony on social media.

Another women activist ‘Alanoud Alsharekh’, a women’s rights activist, called it that it is a hostile movement against women in Kuwait was always insidious and invisible but now its risen to its state.

And a few months earlier, Kuwaiti authorities also shut down a popular gym who particularly famous for hosting belly dancing classes. Clerics demanded police apprehend the organizers of a different women’s retreat called “The Divine Feminine,” citing blasphemy.

However, the top Kuwaiti court will soon hear a case arguing that the administration of Kuwait should ban Netflix amid an uproar over the first Arabic Language film the platform produced.

Hamdan Al-Azmi “If defending the daughters of Kuwait is backward, I am honoured to be called it.”

In one case, they dragged one of the Kuwaiti women named ‘Farah Akbar’ last spring and stabbed to death by a man released on bail against whom she had lodged multiple police complaints.