Malay People

Thanks, interesting post. I dont know much about the Malay people so it would be great if you could answer some questions:

Why are the Malay currently divided?

Is there a Pan-Malay movement?

Are all Malay Muslim?

Are Malay religious people?

Very Interesting questions we have here... I try my very best to answer all of these questions based on my opinion and knowledge (which is not so much....).

1. Malay regions are divided.. probably because of the geographical factors... most of the region land is in island forms.. as u can see from the map... Borneo (consist of Sabah and Sarawak and Kalimantan), Philipines, Sulawesi, Java, Sumatera and Peninsular of Malaysia (by right supposed to be in tht map as MA) so the malay people are seperated by that.. the influence of colonization previously... based on different countries seperated the malay people more... Malaysia by British... Indonesia by Netherland/Holland, Philipines by Spain... I believe this is the factor why currently Malays are divided.

2. Pan-Malay Movement? well previously yes.. there were such movement... during Indonesia confrontation to join malaysia and Indonesia in one country.. called as Indonesia Raya... they attacked Malaysia... and the rest is History...

3. Are all malay muslim? Well.. u are referring to the specific malay in specific country or based on the map? if malay malaysian... like me... we are supposed to be all muslims... here the word 'supposed'... but there's some cases happened where malay changed the religion... if refer to the native malay (the original malay such as negrito, jakun) their belief in animism... some already convert to Islam, Christian, Hindu and etc... If u refer to Malay Indonesia... not all are muslims...

4. Are Malay religious people? in term of Islam or Christian or what? I answer u based on Islam cos I am a muslim... malay like other races too.. u are a turk .. am i correct? there will be some is good in 'dean'... some is moderate... some is simple... but most of malay i can say 98.99% who is muslim... we are devoted to Islam.. yeah.. as far as i can see from my observation and understanding...

I wish my answers are good enough...

Yes they were... Same as Malaysia, Brunei and other countries which are in MA

Before it was known as Singapore or Singapura in Malay... it was called as Temasik..

Here is a very interesting info i found:

Source: http://www.sabrizain.demon.co.uk/malaya/malays.htm

Cool... got arab blood in me.. lol .. I doubt that...

I Think singaproe is very difference with other malay country becasue of the people,in singapro there have more then 80% is chinese.and they speak chinese,even though english is a official langange of singaproe but the government suggest citizen learn chinese and speak chinese.

           Singapore's population, though small at 4.42 million as of  2005, is relatively diverse compared to most other countries, although neighbour malysia also features a multiracial population. The chinese, who have constituted the majority of the island population since the colonial days, account for 76.8 percent of Singaporeans.malays, who are the indigenous native group of the country, constitute 13.9 percent, though this number includes many Malay ethnic groups from other parts of the malay archipelago including the javaese, bugis,baweans and minangs. indians are the third largest ethnic group at 7.9 percent, consisting of several groups�Xtamils, who form the largest Indian group, and others such as malayalees,punjabis and bengalis. The rest are made up of smaller groups such as Arbs, Jews, Thais, Japanese, and the Euroasia community

Ethnics spread and diversity.

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Indeed my friend. 

As we know from history the Malays were seafaring race. I havn't seen any material concerning the relationship between the Malays and the Polynesian. All I  can tell you is  based on research done by James Michiner when he wrote  the novel' Hawaii'. The Polynesien claimed that their root from the Malays of the SE Asia.

The Malagasy are Malays stock and I was told that the language and custom are akin to the early Malay culture. Frankly I have no  idea how they managed to get there.

AS for the Cape Malays in South Africa the history is quite clear. Bulk of them were shipped by the Dutch from Malacca to serve the early white sattlers in South Africa.

The do seem linguistically related.

Just canoing.

They must have abandoned Indonesia after the local start of the Iron Age but before the arrival of Hinduism. That places the migration around the first centuries of the Common Era.

An interesting thought , TinTin.

Your post on the origin of the Malays in the Malay Archipelago is equally interesting. However, I would like to add that those ppl from Taiwan are believed to be from Yunnan in China.

Experts say that there were three waves of ancient  migration of ppl into the Archipelago :

1. Around 22,000 years ago of Afro-Asiatic race from the Andaman region. They were rather primitive and became the aboriginal ppl like the Sakais, Negritos, Javaman etc.

2. Around 3,000 BCE, the Proto Malays from Yunnan. They cultivated rice and used bronze. They settled by the river banks and pushed the earlier settlers further inland and into the jungles.

3. Around 1,000(?) BCE the Malays from Yunnan who were navigators, potters, weavers, blacksmiths etc.   

Here I would like to share some info on Orang Asli

Orang Asli or the indegenious minority peoples of Peninsular Malaysia.. They are considered as original peoples or first people.

From study done by few researches, there are  18 sub-ethnic groups which can be classified in these groups:-

-Negrito
-Senoi
-Proto-Malay

They represent less than 1% of our country population...

Senoi and Negrito are being suggest tht to have historical link with indegenous peoples in Burma, Thailand and Indo-China...

Well.. for proto Malay, their ancestor were believed came from the Indonesian Island..

U are absolutely rite.. tht's why we need a forum where other members need to contribute and share their knowledge with others... those points u mentioned.. we can discuss on different topics.. feel free to create one topic tin tin... especially the Malay development after post colonialism.. sounds interesting...  It would be nice to see some post on South East Asia in this forum rather thn to see all about South Asia