Abdul Hadi Ali's letter, which I find racist and disturbing refers.

As a Malaysian, I am appalled by what he has written. People like him have no place in Malaysia and a just world. I do not oppose him when he says Malaysia is 'Malayland'.

This is history. The Malays are the Orang Asli of Peninsular Malaysia. And the natives of Borneo are of Malay stock. But our common ground stops here.

There is nothing wrong with people learning their own mother tongues and having the right to practice their own culture and set up their own mother tongue schools.

Generosity and a willingness to learn from foreign races is a very noble Malay trait, that which the great Malays during the days of the Johor (Sri Vijaya) and Melaka empires upheld.

Malays in the past, especially traders, knew Arabic, Hindi and even Chinese languages and this is documented in Hikayat Hang Tuah.

Malays welcomed foreigners such as Chinese and Indians to their shores and treated them well.

But the same cannot be said of many Malays of today, in particular the politicians.

Malays of today should emulate the Malays of yesteryears by acting global and thinking local.

Those days, the emperor of China and Admiral Cheng Ho regarded Malays as the most noble of people outside China's shores.

If Cheng Ho and his emperor had lived today, they might have invaded and annexed Malaysia, out of a disgust of Malays such as Abdul Hadi Ali.