I refer to the Malaysiakini report Bouquets, brickbats for yoga fatwa .

The defiance shown by the liberal Muslims to the fatwa on yoga, is also happening in other religions and in fact it is worse and more fundamental than Islam such as the Catholics demanding the Pope to allow divorce for married Catholics as well as the use of family planning pills.

In the US , the question of abortion has always been a major divide between the Democrats and the Republicans. Even the Sikhs, who are known as a community very faithful to their religion, are defying their basic teachings like keeping long hair under their turbans.

This is indeed the age of liberalism, agnosticism and atheism in which religion is reduced to, as the liberals had demanded, a matter strictly for the individuals.

While the non-Muslims should stay clear of religious issues such as this because it doesn't apply to them, those Muslims who want to continue to practice yoga will only have their conscience and aqidah to think about.

After all no one can enter a Muslim home without permission to check if you keep whiskey in your cabinet, let alone doing yoga in your study.

The way I see it, the Muslim political leaders and the pro-government ulama are to blame for the decline in aqidah among Muslims in this country because these ulama have always said that Islam is an easy and very liberal religion thus causing many Muslims to start using their own reasoning to make their own rules in so far as Fiqh is concerned’

This is made worse by the spread of various ajaran sesat which changed the rules completely like the five daily prayers are considered done by just thinking of Allah or fasting during Ramadhan is good enough by doing it only at the beginning, the middle and the end of the month.

But like any other religion, Islam (apart from the haram , the halal , the makruh and the harus ) too, has strict rules on every sector of an individual as well as the community’s or the ummah ’s life.

In so far as the yoga is concerned, Muslims who practice it should ask themselves whether yoga is compatible with this verse: ‘And when you have completed the prayer, remember Allah while you are standing, sitting, or (lying) on your sides. But when you become secure, re-establish (regular) prayer. Indeed, prayer has been decreed upon the believers a decree of specified times,’An Nisa’ 4:103

Also, if these Muslin yoga practitioners are curing their various ailments, have they tried the Islamic ‘exercises’ ie, the various supplementary prayers in addition to the five daily ones which are done at various times of day and night plus all the zikir.

A Christian scientist immediately converted to Islam after discovering that the ritual of sujud (bowing down to the floor) in Islamic prayer is the only body movement that allows blood to reach a particular part of the brain which cannot happen in any other body movement (including yoga).

At the end of the day, one question that comes of our minds is why do the Muslims today - especially those who have studied in the ‘civilised’ non-Islamic countries, always find the non-Islamic cultures more appealing.

For instance, why are Muslim girls and women today showing off more and more of their flesh that even the non-Muslims would feel embarrassed. Some Muslims today have no qualms about wearing the T-shirts and jeans with all kinds of mind-boggling wordings on them such ‘Jack Daniels’, ‘True Heroes - US Marines’ or ‘Replay’ at the bottom part of a Malay girl’s jeans.