Malays, << MAY layz or muh LAYZ, >> are a group of Southeast Asian peoples. Most of the approximately 130 million Malays live in Indonesia and Malaysia.
The Malay culture is extremely diverse. It consists of about 300 ethnic groups that speak various dialects of the Malay language. Most of the groups are Muslims and work as civil servants or as rice farmers. Both men and women often dress in a traditional length of cloth worn as a skirt. In general, the Malays highly value social harmony, courtesy, and respect for authority.
Anthropologists believe the ancestors of the Malays migrated to Southeast Asia from southern China thousands of years ago. These ancestors practiced a religion based on animism, the belief that all things in nature–even lifeless objects–have spirits. Some Malays today combine animist beliefs with Islam or with other religions.
In the first century A.D., traders from India brought Hinduism and Buddhism to the Malay region. For hundreds of years, rival Hindu and Buddhist Malay kingdoms struggled against each other. In the 1400’s, Muslim merchants and teachers from the Near East and India introduced Islam to the Malays. The ruler of Melaka, an important Malay kingdom, converted to Islam and promoted its spread.
In the 1500’s, the Portuguese captured Melaka and became the first Europeans to influence the Malays. For most of the period from the 1700’s to the mid-1900’s, the Dutch ruled Indonesia and the British governed Malaysia. Indonesia and Malaysia then gained independence, and the Malays played a major role in shaping the two nations.
