I am rather peturbed by certain articles published online on the origin of Malays, the meaning of the word Melayu as well as the special priviledges accorded to Malays by the Malaysian Constitution. Among these is one by Syed Imran, an Arab-Malaysian born in Penang, Malaysia, an ex-Bernama journalist (1971-1998) and former press secretary to a Minister in PM’s Department.
To him nearly 90 percent of Malaysians, especially those in the Peninsula, are immigrants, and all of us are actually squatters in the land of Allah anyways. We are anything but permanent owners, we are merely squatters.
For example, he cited himself as from a family that squatted in this blessed land. His paternal grandfather and grandmother migrated from Mecca and Brunei, while his maternal grandmother came from Hadramut, Yaman. We are immigrants and squatters, he wrote, as are almost everyone else in this country.
To me, Syed Imran’s view is an isolated view on the Malay race in nusantara and in Malaysia. There are actually many definitions of the malay race in the past few hundred years. In the context of Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore and Thailand it is a race of people who speak the same language and profess the same religion. It has a fairly long history even prior to the foundation of Malacca sultanate about 600 yrs ago.
In Malaysia and Malaya before that, the Malay race has a slightly different twist as it includes recent immigrant from outside Nusantara namely from India and Arab countries. While nusantara Malays have similar culture, language and religion to bind them, the immigtants from outside Nusantara particular from India and Arab countries are different. They have been classified as Malays and Bumiputera under the law. I may be right to say that they prefer to be identified as Malays because of economic benefits, but would easily change affiliation depending on the circumstances that benefit them from time to time. The reason is simple, their Malayness is not deep rooted and quite recent.
The formation of a race of course take a timeline of over a millinium. In this context ours is very new compared to the Chinese, Arab and Jews which have existed over a few millinium. That is probably why Malay race particularly in Malaysia is still willing to admit other people into the race. It is also a convenient way to increase our numbers in facing threats from other immigrant races.
The Arab race also expanded by admitting prople in the conquered land as Arabs. Prior to Islamic empire Arabs were only the inhabitants of what is now Saudi Arabia. Now after embracing Islam and adopting Arab language and culture Arabs are found in many countries especially in North Africa such as Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, etc. In fact, these new Arabs far outnumber the original inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula.
In the same way Malay has been developing as a race in a period of almost a millinium. It is now meaningless and inconsequential for a more recent Malays to deny existence of the race. Probably, it is time for Malays in Malaysia to stop admitting new members. It doesn’t need expansion now, but rather a period of consolidation to ensure purity of common values and culture to survive in a competitive world, just as the Chinese, Japanese, English and Jews do.
DAH IKHWAN
