Senaman yoga haram: Majlis Fatwa Kebangsaan

PUTRAJAYA: Majlis Fatwa Kebangsaan hari ini mengharamkan umat Islam daripada melakukan senaman yoga secara sistematik kerana boleh memesongkan akidah.

Pengerusinya, Prof Datuk Dr Abdul Shukor Husin, berkata senaman yoga yang sistematik mengandungi tiga perkara iaitu amalan fizikal, unsur keagamaan, mentera dan pemujaan yang jelas bertentangan dengan syariat Islam.

Sehubungan itu, beliau menasihatkan umat Islam menjauhi dan menghentikan amalan itu kerana tujuan dan matlamat untuk mendapatkan ketenangan serta kemuncaknya konon memperoleh penyatuan diri dengan tuhan boleh merosakkan akidah muslim.

WINDMILLS OF POLITICAL CHANGE

By SUHAINI AZNAM (The Star)

Since ‘serious’ bloggers are also socio-political commentators, any change in the political seascape will also mean a shift in bloggers’

orientation.

BLOGGERS are the windmills of political change, shifting with political winds. When Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi announced that he was no longer going to defend his post as Umno president, he took the wind out of the sails of his sharpest critics.

One such is Syed Azidi Syed Aziz, 38, of sheih kickdefella fame, who now has to “do some soul searching”. Before the March 8 general election, bloggers were either outright pro-Opposition or pro-establishment but against the Pak Lah administration. The latter “had such a huge impact that they swayed the final majority,”

said Sheih.

In 1999, those who opposed Dr Mahathir had not had such great an impact because they were preaching to the converted.

“Blogs then were just to update. The DAP and PAS had only 500 to 3,000 hits per day. They did not appeal to the masses,” added Sheih.

Former New Straits Times journalist and editor Ahirudin Attan, better known as Rocky of “Rocky’s Bru”, concurred. In March, “all three categories were blogging for change”.

But “almost overnight, post March 8, all bloggers who had been critical of the Government, toned down.

“We are seeing the true colours of the socio-political bloggers,” explained Rocky. “

There is a change in attitude. Bloggers are shown to be political activists.

“Those claiming they are for change are not walking the talk,” he said, citing the Selangor Government’s stand on the latest temple demolition. People are rearranging their hierarchy of trust. Before, trust was very high. Now we are slipping very fast.”
“I used to support Pakatan,” declared Zainol Abidin, 50 (aka Mahaguru58). “I felt we needed a change. I expected change. Now they have taken over five states and there is no change. So I am aligning myself to no one, not the Barisan, and I will whack Anwar (Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim) left, right and blue!”
Former journalist Nuraina Samad, whose 3540 jalan sudin has over a million hits, was more philosophical. The Government had come under “unbridled attack and some people now feel that enough is enough”, she said.

“Umno lost because a lot of Malays voted for the Opposition,” observed Nuraina.

“A new group of bloggers, more pro-Barisan, emerged because a lot of people realised that maybe it was not such a good idea to vote the PKR. These were people trying to go with the renewal of Umno and trying to counter Opposi tion bloggers like Elizabeth Wong and Jeff Ooi.”
Before March, a lot of MPs and politicians who blogged were from the DAP, PAS, and the PKR. After Abdullah said the Barisan must counter this trend, several Barisan politicians answered the call, “opening Facebooks and using the tools that were said to have given them a miserable time”, said Rocky.

Jebat Must Die, Demi Negara, Chedet are all very influential, he added. Even Abdullah’s warkahuntukpm was launched after the general election to deal with thorny issues and people’s complaints.

Divided for change

Bloggers are very political now, on both sides of the divide, said Nuraina.

“Bloggers during the general election were for change,” she noted. “We walked together many times: the penguin walk, freedom walk, yellow march.”
If after the election, the PR had expected bloggers to continue with this line, they were disappointed. “We can’t attack the DAP, Anwar, Teresa,”said Nuraina.

When bloggers try to point out corruption in Pakatan-held states, they become very combative and go on the offensive.

“Those Opposition bloggers even view neutral ones like me as pro-government. I am accused of not being supportive,” said Rocky.

If readers have noticed a slight change in his stance, particularly after Abdullah said he was stepping down, Rocky maintained that “bloggers are divided more by political agenda, beliefs, than who they are rooting for as prime minister.”
With the changing of the guards to Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, the future of bloggers actually depends on Najib’s strategy in the local mainstream newspapers. Najib already has his own people who manage blogs for him, said Rocky, citing Najib’s 1malaysia, launched last September.

Already, the pressure on Pak Lah has eased, agreed Sheih. “Bloggers who endorse Najib will monitor him but won’t be that critical of him. The ball will be in Najib’s court”.

Speaking of NST and Berita Harian, how they will behave under Najib will depend on whether the Government changes its old ways in terms of media control, said Rocky.

“If the Government can show it is more liberal – meaning if they put me there (laughing) – intervention is vastly reduced, the relevance of blogs will be severely tested. It has been proven that “wherever the media is most free, blogs are dependent on crumbs”, hoping for that one big scoop a year, he noted.

The future

Rocky remains the bloggers’ favourite, as “Rocky’s Bru” not only has the numbers – a total of seven-going-on-eight million hits – but it also enjoys peer acclaim. Rocky, how ever, feels he has reached optimum point.

“Bloggers like me are finding that there are limitations to what a blog can do. At the rate I am doing (working alone), I get 30,000 unique visitors per day. Chedet gets 60,000 to 70,000 per day. To go beyond that is perhaps not possible,” he admitted.

He thinks the logical next step would be to “turn blogs into news portals, add new features, thereby increasing readership, while maintaining Rocky’s Bru (which would) occupy a small corner on the news portal.”
He thinks chedet.com, former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s immensely popular blog, would also go the same route, and may be enhanced with a photo corner of his life’s experiences.

“This solo act is very tiring,” sighed Rocky, referring to the tremendous effort involved in researching and writing, plus sifting through the comments of their fans and detractors. “I can’t go on like this.”

What then drives bloggers in the absence of monetary rewards?

Whatever their political stripes and personal idiosyncrasies, bloggers are crusaders.

Dr Mahathir’s daughter Datin Paduka Marina (rantingsbymm) feels that “blogs grew exponentially because of people’s almost uncontrollable need to speak out. People were bursting to express themselves.”

Pride in growing their blogs is another motivator, and certainly there is idealism.

In April 2007, Rocky set up the National Bloggers Alliance, which has yet to be registered. It is being managed by a pro-temp committee of which Rocky is president. The Alliance is non-partisan and is intended to protect bloggers and promote responsible blogging.

A year ago, Zainol formed the Muslim Bloggers Alliance “to pool together the thoughts of Muslim bloggers, safeguard the good name of Islam, clarify and teach about Islam and to correct misconceptions about Islam, especially online”.

Applications for membership have flooded in but Zainol is careful. He vets through their blogs and has pared them down to a select 93. Once registered as a mutual benefit society, its monthly contributions will go to a trust fund to take care of legal fees and dakwah activities.

Political affiliations can also be ideals. A new, small grouping called the Barisan Rakyat bloggers, born during the March general election, became most prominent during the Permatang Pauh by-election in August.

Bernard Khoo (blog name Zorro Unmasked), Harris and Raja Petra Kamarud din (Malaysia Today) were all either “inspired or sponsored by Anwar”, said Rocky.

“It gives more variety, choice. It is good for the three to finally declare where their allegiance lie.”
Nuraina noted that “a lot of racialism has reared its head since the general election”. Like other responsible bloggers, she would edit for sedition and slander.

She steers clear of race and religion because “I might have to be brutally frank”. If commentators to her blog are racist or slanderous, she would have to address their issues.

For others, ideologies had emerged from blurred racial lines. Sheih has about three million plus hits, mostly from non-Malay and non-PAS visitors. “The majority read me for my stand on a few things like justice and equality.”

Span of influence

Public Relations consultant and The Star guest columnist Raslan Sharif feels that although most bloggers, especially those from Umno, may be younger people, their target audience are not necessarily so. “They just target voters, irrespective of age. And more people in their 40s and 50s are also getting tech savvy.”
Even among those who are not, “a lot of the issues I hear in the kedai kopi were (first) brought from the blog,”said Raslan.

The trend-setters, however, are not the socio-political bloggers but the personal bloggers, lifestyle, entertainment and business bloggers who form the bulk of the community. And while lifestyle bloggers are known to sell space, socio-political bloggers blog for free.

“We make the noise and they make the money,” said Rocky flatly.

“Lifestyle bloggers like kennysia.com have a huge following,” noted Raslan. “They are an advertising goldmine since readers are mainly in the 25-35 age bracket who tend to spend. In Kenny’s case, ad space would earn him about RM10,000 per month.”
It is a time-consuming task for “a serious hobby”, said Nuraina. “When bloggers carry google ads, you are not in control of what comes out,” even though you appear to have endorsed the products.

Being original is tough work and only the best succeed in stamping a distinctive mark.

“Most socio-political bloggers pick their topics from the newspapers, then dissect, deconstruct the report and analyse or comment on them. But their primary source is the newspapers,” said Raslan.

But Sheih, who does “not see bloggers as reporters, they are columnists, they analyse. People read them to see how they view (events)”, said he seldom picks items from the newspapers, preferring to go to “the source itself, my “informers”, people who e-mail me something”.

He would not, however, call his blog neutral. “They (readers) want a bit of emotion.”

And how the 'DEB' and 'Ketuanan Melayu" benefit the non-Malays in Malaysia more than the Malays!

And how the 'DEB' and 'Ketuanan Melayu" benefit the non-Malays in Malaysia more than the Malays!
By A MALAYSIAN
I take a bit of delight in wanting to celebrate Barack Obama’s celebrated win over John McCain who lost handsomely, due largely to the wrong choices made by his party. Maybe it was their idea in the first place to have such a person so Obama could win as handsomely as he did.
Or, most likely the Republicans did not have anyone who was capable of being nominated as they are all cut from the same cloth as the Bushes - useless to the core.
There have been some Malaysians who have posted their comments on how Obama was nominated by his party and went on to win the presidency. I find them to be wanting and one-sided because those who have written them are absolutely biased.
They said Obama would not have become what he is if he were a Malaysian because of ‘racial discrimination’. Yet, in Malaysia, the Malays are economically worse off than the Chinese.
The ‘Dasar Ekonomi Baru’ and ‘Ketuanan Melayu’ have not benefitted the Malays; they have benefitted the Chinese more.
When will the Chinese give some credit to the Malays for being backward and not too insistent on clinging to slogans and doing nothing?
If the Malays had been insistent and did not care for the well-being of the Chinese, the economy of the Chinese would not be what it is now.
So I suspect there is an element of ‘reverse psychology’ involved here when those Chinese who are successful in many important areas, especially economy and education now turn around to charge the Malays for neglecting them.
When their ancestors were their age, they were carrying night-soil and working as menial laborers, right up to the 1960s, before the 13 May, 1969 tragedy. The situation for the Malays before, as it is now, has not changed that much.
What we hear are more shouts of ‘Ketuanan Melayu’; the empty slogan used by some Umno upstarts to get support from their members.
Many non-Malays have also written to say that Obama would also most likely be arrested under the ISA and be subjected to a host of things. But unfortunately, all of them were not truthful and are racists to the core.
Please accept this as fact: if Michael Jackson were a Malaysian, he too, would not have become an international entertainer, but will mostly be restricted to selling a few thousand discs and winning the Anugerah Industri Musik (AIM) award each year and nothing more other than to be invited to sing on local television and be seen wondering in the Chow Kit area.
And for that matter, even Albert Einstein would have to be contented to becoming a professor at any of our public universities.
Please expect to get more of the same tired remarks and comments from the same racists in Malaysia. There are not many of them, but they are vocal only if they do not sign their names and post them in websites where they are safe and can continue to express their racists remarks.
The truth is, Barack Hussein Obama Jr, managed to gain the support and sympathy of the majority of the American voters because he fashioned himself as an American, through and through.
He did not dare trust his Kenyan background.
The truth is that Obama does not speak and write in the language of his ancestors in Kenya but of the majority in America – which is English and not Kenyan.
Obama does not celebrate festivals of his ancestors in Kenya or Africa, but those of America and was also last seen sending his daughter, Shasha to attend a Halloween party.
If Obama is a Chinese in America, born to a Taiwan, China or Hong Kong father and an American mother and who chooses to speak in Mandarin and celebrates festivals of the Chinese, chances are he will still be stuck in the rut in any of the Chinatowns in America operating a Chinese restaurant.
And chances are, too, he won’t dare speak up on American politics, much less on world politics since his worldview is so limited and confined to the happenings in Chinatown.
But fortunately, Obama fashions himself as an American through and through, despite his Kenyan background. He is a true-blooded American like the others in the land of immigrants.
In Malaysia, the Chinese and Indians still prefer to speak in their native languages and celebrate festivals of their ancestors and pretend to be still back in their Motherlands, while also pretending to be Malaysian.
So no wonder, the Chinese and Indian leaders in Malaysia are often looked down upon by the Malays. And no wonder, too, the issue of Ketuanan Melayu are often brought up by the non-Malays.
It is not just the few Malays who are bringing up this issue, but the few strident non-Malay leaders and the other individuals who write comments anonymously and post them in blogs or websites.
The Malays have no need to feel threatened by them. The non-Malays are fewer in numbers after all. The non-Malays shouldn't be threatened by the Malays, they are still economically better off.
There is a lot of understanding amongst the majority of Malaysians in Malaysia, except for these small groups who make the headlines often with their diatribes.

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