YOURSAY ‘Even if Malay genome is different from Caucasian, Chinese, or Indian genome, we are more alike than we are different.'

Universiti Teknologi Mara maps Malay genome

AB Sulaiman: Here is an incredible opportunity for everyone to debunk the claim that the Malays were the early inhabitants of the country.

Here it's proven that they were not 'bumiputera' and the ‘Ketuanan Melayu' polity used to substantiate this claim in truth has no substance. It has been a myth all along.

Why then is Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yasin glorifying this find as a boon not for science and truth, but instead for biotechnology?

My guess is he wishes to deflect people's attention away from this painful newly found truth - that the Malays are not the original settlers is 'bad news' and might hurt and confuse the Malays.

This has potential for vote loss. 'New biotechnological markets' however carries mountain-high dollar and ringgit signs and would be bound to retain votes. What an incredible intellect.

Joker: The Malay 'race' is defined in the Constitution of Malaysia, which now includes Orang Asli, people of Chinese, Indian and European descend, people from the Americanas, Middle East and whoever comes to Malaysia and professes he or she is a Muslim and adopts Malay culture. How to map a Malay genome like this?

If on the other hand, they are defining 'Malay' as people from the Indonesian archipelago and Peninsular Malaysia, then it is dubious of UTM (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia) to call them as such and say that there are 200 million of them.

It is more accurate to call them Indonesians since they are by far the majority.

Black Mamba: Has anyone realise the Malay race is only peculiar to Malaysia? And that is through the birth of the Federal Constitution.

The Javanese, Sumatran and the people of Celebes Island proudly called themselves Indonesian, the Malay stocks in Singapore prefers to be known as Singaporean globally and the Southern Philippines Mindanaos don't associate themselves as Malays but rather as the name of their province.

The same with Southern Thailand Malay stocks who prefer to be know as Pattanis. So, the Malay race is actually a composition of Bugis, Minangkabau, sprinkling of Arabs, Indians, Cham Chinese and the other ‘dan lain lain' coming together in 1957 through the passing of the Bill as Malays.

Blind Freddo: What absolute rubbish. If there is any difference at all between the Malay genome and any other human genome, it will be something like 0.0004 percent difference, seeing that the chimp and homo sapiens have 98 percent compatibility.

This is just a feeble attempt to quantify the sick concept of Malay supremacy. It's my bet that big pharmaceutical companies wouldn't give 4g of petrified monkey droppings for this 'invaluable' information.

Milosevic: There must have been many waves settling in Malaysia over vast swathes of time. The earliest ones probably also found their way to Australia. We have very ancient people in Malaysia but as usual, they are pushed aside by the more recent pendatang .

The Malay pendatang has done most to hurt the lifestyle of the Orang Asli, particularly in taking away their land whether in the deep past or by more recent stealing by the chief ministers and rulers of Malaysia.

In the end, it is political power that defines indigenous status. We can all be indigenous, or we can say only the Orang Asli are the true indigenous people.

The Malays are actually quite recent pendatang , and history will show deep Hindu and Buddhist influences before Islam. The idea of owning the country is hollow but needed by political usurpers.

The Orang Asli also are pendatang, but at least they stole little from an existing people. It's time to respect all the pendatangs equally.

Quigonbond: The research is fine. What Malaysians won't be able to stomach is how this information will eventually be used to justify an Aryan mentality - the chosen people, at the expense of all other races.

You can just see that with the Biotech Corp CEO Mohd Nazlee Kamal's already brazen attitude as to claim that western medicine are "not suitable" for Malays. It's as if Malays aren't homo sapiens.

Even if Malay genome is different from Caucasian, Chinese, or Indian genome, we are more alike than we are different. Try telling Malays that cancer drugs, or for that matter, Viagra, is not suitable for them.

KohJL: I suspect the researchers and politicians are using very different constructs of the ‘Malay race'. The two groups use the same words but do not necessarily mean the same thing.

However I would withhold judgment until I could read their paper. In the meantime, National Geographic's genographic project website provides a fascinating back story.

Interested Bystander: "We want to prove that theory and the theory that Orang Asli had migrated from Africa," he said. What a laugh that is. Everyone migrated from Africa.

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