I refer to the malaysiakini interviews with Ikim director-general Dr Syed Ali Tawfik Al-Attas of which there is one part where he says that the Malays have no existence prior to the coming of Islam and Arabic.

Let me tell him this. While Islam made Malays become successful, the fact is that they were already a great and successful people when they were all Hindu and Buddhist, under the rule of the Malay king of Sri Vijaya, also known as the Malay king of Johor (Sri Vijaya equals Johor).

The Malays have been Hindu and Buddhist from the beginning of time, and only became Muslim beginning from the fifth century. Most Malay words bear Hindu and Buddhist influence, from Sanskrit. Arabic only forms a small portion of Bahasa Malaysia.

In fact, the very name 'Malay' means 'Hill People' in Sanskrit. 'Bahasa' is also Sanskrit for 'language'. The British, meanwhile, called the Malays East Indians as opposed to Indians from India. They never associated the Malays with Arabs.

Why is Dr Syed Ali so adamant about erasing the Malays' glorious Hindu and Buddhist past? Is it because he is partly Arabic? I have nothing against things Arabic. Arabic culture spawned modern science and technology, together with Indian, Chinese and, yes, the Malay culture.

But to make the Malays 100 percent the product of Arabic culture, is to reduce them to an artificial people, a people without their own history and identity. It is cultural genocide.