Who is MALAY ?

by Aizley Shahar

Who is Malay ?

There been ruckus about malay rights... malay ultra... malay extremist..."pendatang malay"... mamak malay.... who is Malay ?

Well, some of them would say that their ancestor had live in the Malay Archipelago for hundreds and hundreds of years.... which included the Malay peninsular, the Sumatran, Borneo and Philippines island.. They were part of the old malay empire that included the Kedah old Govt....and later Melacca and Johor-Riau Sultanate that ruled most of these areas from as early as  1200s till when the arrival of the Portuguese explorer (which for your information, his decendent is considered bumi(s) yaa ) ... Alfonso D'Albuqerque in 1511..

Some of them even came as late as turn of the century... where a lot of migration from Sumatra and Javanese Island during the tin and rubber rush...

Well, if you want to address this way,, good luck... because until the end of time.. you can never satisfy everyone...

so, what has happened that the Reid Commission has wrote down in the constitution of federation of malaya the definition of Malay in the eye of the law...

1)  A Muslim Citizen... (have to be born before 1957)

2) Use Malay language as their mother tongue... (for your info, my family from my mother side is Javanese, so, my late grand uncle was denied his scholarship because he was not consider truly a Malay and the reason being he has a Javanese name).....

3) Live his/her life as a Malay. ie having a Malay name... consider by a normal person standard is a Malay.

BY LAW, anyone has all the above is a BANGSA MELAYU...

Many Indian Muslim that assimilate and become Bangsa Melayu within 2 generation...they even have their kind leaders and Ministers in UMNO, the prime party of Malay in Malaysia.

I will give you a prime example:

When I was in the Boy's Wing, Royal Military College... I had an Officer Commanding  (OC) who is from the Royal Malay Regiment.  For your info, there are many type of regiment in the Malaysian army but this specific regiment consisted of 100% of the largest race in Malaysia.  This was formed by the Colonial British in the request by the Malay Rulers as the protector of Malaya States.  His father was a well know headmaster from King Edward VIII school in Taiping who is an Indian muslim.

However, when you look closely at my OC, he is not that dark compere to other 'Mamak fella",  Even  by his name, no one knew that by blood, he is not related to any Malay !!.. later did i found out that his mother is Chinese !!

so, when you mixed black coffee with milk.. you get brown coffee !!! hehehe....

For you information, for someone to be accepted and serve in the ROYAL MALAY REGIMENT.. you have to be a Malay... and from there, i found out that he is.... in the eyes of the LAW !

Apparently, both his parents has embraced the Malay race and called it their own and been accepted by the local malay community....the mother had converted to muslim to marry the father and both detached from their own mother tongue had had called Malay language as their own...

This fine gentleman rose to the rank of a Major General in the RMR before retiring who himself married to a Malay lady and now all their children is of course MELAYU 100%....

something to ponder i suppose...  hmmmm

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