Accusing the country’s previous British colonial masters of the conspiracy, the group pointed to a claimed 350-million strong “Malay people” purportedly rooted here to insist that peninsular Malaysia be identified as a Malay and Islamic state.
“Malaysia is a huge province which has been settled by the Malays and hold the Malay identity for over 60,000 years, and has embraced Islam for hundreds of years.
“History also showed that Borneo, including Sabah and Sarawak has the same identity,” ISMA vice-president Abdul Rahman Mat Dali (pic above) said on the group’s website here.
He also asserted that Malaysia was dubbed “The Cradle of Human Civilisation”. The nickname has been claimed by many areas worldwide, but is widely recognised to be either in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, India, the Andes or Central America.
Despite ISMA’s assertions, however, it is estimated that there are only around 30 million ethnic Malays worldwide, primarily in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand.
Indonesia’s latest census puts the country’s population at over 237 million, but only 9 million identify themselves as ethnic Malay.
“Malay” as a race was once an antiquated catch-all, used in the 19th and early 20th century, to describe the Austronesian peoples.
The largely-Christian Filipinos were also previously referred to as “Malays” in their textbooks.
Abdul Rahman claimed that the entry of the Chinese and Indians had been a “cunning and evil” conspiracy by the British to weaken the Malays who were opposed to its occupation.
Over time, Malays had been normalised to call the country a multicultural and multi-religious country, he said.
“Are the Malays ‘excessively kind’ and willing for the world to record in its history that the Malays is a race which does not have its own motherland. To live and procreate by squatting and homeless in a foreign land?”
“Islam has never blessed for a Muslim nation to have such shallow thoughts,” Abdul Rahman claimed.
In supporting the continuation of Malay special “rights”, ISMA had in its seminar and events suggested that the community were the original settlers of Malaysia, describing the native indigenous Orang Asli as sharing the same ethnic roots with the Malays.
The group had also suggested that ancient Malays had been one of the oldest civilisations in the world, which went on to spawn other current ethnic groups, but has since had their riches and knowledge stripped by foreign powers.
ISMA had suggested for Shariah to be the law of the land replacing the country’s existing dual-track legal system in last year, alleging that Malaysia has practised Islamic laws even since the times of the Malacca empire.
The Malays and Bumiputera make up the majority of Malaysia’s population at an estimated 67.4 per cent of the 28.3 million population, followed by the Chinese at 24.6 per cent, according to the most recent census at 2010.
1 comment:
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