Melayu?

Will the real Melayu please stand up Melayu is derived from the Javanese word Melayu, there are many other words in the Malay vocabulary that actually come from the various Asian languages mostly those of Sanskrit Origin. 

The Sanskrit in Malay is derived from the Indian influence of the Majapahit, Sriviajaya and other Indian influences in South East Asia. 

This particular word in Bahasa Malaysia is derived from the word Melayu from Javanese. Javanese was the lingua franca of the people in the region having its own script, the original Javanese script had its origins in India and later the present day script which was actually taken from the Arabic script, the Bugis and the rest have dialects close to Javanese. 

The Malay language in its romanised context only evolved in the early part of the 20th century. In Javanese the word Melayu means running away, or a run away, that is why if you go to Java and ask a Javanese if he is Melayu he will feel very insulted. The word Melayu found on the statue as claimed in your URL; http://www.sabrizain.org/malaya/malays4.htm thus denotes that the person buried there was a Melayu, a "Run Away. 

These people the run aways whether in Sumatra or in the Malay Peninsula referred to themselves as orang Melayu, it is therefore no coincidence that the word orang is placed before Melayu, people who ran away so to speak. 

In the Malay Peninsular it was gradually accepted as the word to describe the Javanese, the Bugis, the Menang, the Achinese etc. and even the Kelantanese who are actually Yunanese and have their origins in China, because they recognized the fact that at the end of the day they were all Melayu, or Run Aways from their respective homelands the word was accepted by all these communities to describe themselves. 

In fact before the formation of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) all these so called people in the country had referred to themselves as Menang, Achinese, Bugis, Java etc. etc. and we all know that the Kelantanese used to treat the other Melayu, that is the Menang, Java the Bugis etc. as foreigners. 

Well for that matter even Mahathir Mohammed was registered as Indian in King Edwards College where he studied medicine, and a clearer look into our History will tell us that Hang Tuah is a Chinese. 

The Onn Jaafar family had Turkish heritage how they became Malay is anyone's guess, and if you remember well enough one of the first countries Tun Hussein On visited was Turkey, and today Onn Jaafar's grandson is the leader of UMNO youth.

 Now that should explain why some people say "dia masuk Melayu" and this phrase is very common amongst Malays. 

This so called Malay therefore very much like the Indians, and later the Chinese are Melayu in the very true sense of the word because they all left their respective countries to come to this location in South East Asia called Malaysia today. 

The real natives of the country are the Orang Laut, the Jakun, the Kadazaan, the Iban, the Senoi and the rest, and not the so called Orang Melayu, because these people are actually Javanese, Achinese, Bugis, people from the Mollucas islands, and other parts of neighbouring Indonesia, including the those from Cambodia and even China (Yunanese). 

That explains the word melayu found in gravestones in various parts of Sumatra too. 

These people, the runaways from Java to Sumatra and Malaysia were referred to as Java Kontra a term they despised by the Javanese Melayu and today in Sumatra they are referred to as Orang Transmigrasi which is more acceptable to the Javanese in Indonesia then the term Melayu. 

For Malay citizenship and for permanent residence reasons, the Orang Java, be they Sundanese, Orang Java Barat, Orang Java Tengah or Orang Java Timor, or any other Indonesian for that matter recognises the fact that the day he becomes a Malaysian citizen he is now an Orang Melayu that is a new word coined by Malaysians of these origins to legitimise their Bumiputraism. 

And to become Bumiputra this way that is by becoming a Melayu he has to profess the Islamic faith. 

This privilege is not extended to Dayaks, from Kalimantan, they are Dayaks and Ibans because they are not Muslims, or for that matter people of other faiths from among Sumatra, Java or any other Indonesian Islands. 

The irony of all this is the fact that if you look at the real Orang Asli of Malaysia as a whole you'll find out that the majority of them are not from the Islamic faith, and that is one of the reasons why in Sabah the registration department of the Federal Government legitimised and gave citizenship and permanent residence status to hundreds and thousands of illegal Fillipina immigrants from the Southern part of the Philippines. 

I therefore disagree with your attempt to legitimize the term Orang Melayu as a race, it is not and never will be. 

The so called Melayu must own up to their own heritage the way the Chinese and Indians in Malaysia proudly do. 

It is a shame, and in fact a disgrace that they are the only group of people who by this very act, show the world that they are ashamed of their own heritage. And who else can be so? Only those who run away or are banished from their own lands, for it is only such people who are ashamed of their own heritage. 

Why, even the customs, the traditions, the dressings, the architecture etc. of these so called Malays point to the fact that the so called Orang Melayu of Peninsular Malaysia are actually not one and the same people