Is yoga haram? lets say my intention is not to pray like they do only to relax my mind etc?
According to the Azhar-educated scholar Dr. Ujail Al-Nashami1 if yoga is done for health (exercise and meditation) then it is permissible, while the mystical and religious parts of it should be avoided. He says that once the health-related parts of yoga are isolated then it becomes merely a sport like other sports.
Due to its association with Hinduism and Buddhism most scholars appear to have a very negative view of yoga. But there is no reason why a Muslim cannot take the beneficial parts of yoga and make use of them while rejecting the prohibited parts of it. Mosque architecture was largely inspired by pre-Islamic religious architecture from Central Asia, but Muslims took it, avoided the anti-Islamic elements of it (such as statues of gods) and made it part of their own architecture. There is no reason why Muslims cannot do the same with yoga.
Footnotes
- عجيل النشمي, I am not sure about the correct pronunciation of his name as there are multiple possibilities thanks to the vagueness in the Arabic writing system.