o - Aceh Books website

478 MALAYS
century, and even into the early European colonial period before the onset of
the Industrial Revolution.
Malays founded several trading empires, among which Sri Vijaya, Melayu
and Melaka were most important, and their language became the major language
of commerce in Southeast Asian ports. Melaka, successor of fourteenth-century
Melayu, which lost its empire to the Javanese kingdom of Majapahit, was instrumental
in converting many Southeast Asian kingdoms to Islam in the fifteenth
century.
In the idiom of the Malay language, to be converted to the Islamic faith is to
enter Malay ethnicity (masok melayu). And many non-Malays have become
Malays through conversion to Islam and residence in a Malay community. According
to folk definition and according to the constitution of the Federation of
Malaysia, anyone who habitually speaks Malay language, follows Malay custom,
and adheres to the religion of Islam is a Malay. The folk ideal is that all Malays
are Muslims.
Malays belong to the Shafi school of the Sunni tradition. They are orthodox
in their conception and practice of Islam, but in addition they have some beliefs
and rituals that are clearly Hindu-Buddhist or animistic in origin and are a
continuation of pre-Islamic (pre-fourteenth-century) traditions in Malay culture.
In this syncretism Islamic elements are not distorted or diminished by animistic
or Hindu-Buddhist elements; rather, each religious tradition has appropriate places
within the whole of Malay religious belief and practice.
Animistic beliefs include conceptions of spiritual energy or soul substance
(semangat), disembodied spiritual essence (badi), place spirits (hantu) and demonic
presences, such as vampire crickets (pelesit), thumb-sized manikins (polong)
and monstrous childbirth hags (pontianak). The rituals of birth, illness and
death, as well as agricultural rituals, are especially rich in animistic symbolism.
Hindu-Buddhist symbols are important in the rituals of Malay royalty and in
ceremonies which utilize metaphors of royalty, such as weddings and certain
types of curing seances.
Islamic rites begin and end virtually all ceremonies, even those which are
predominantly animistic or Hindu-Buddhist in content. Moreover, Islamic ritual
is more commonplace than animistic or Hindu-Buddhist ritual. The ritual includes
five daily prayers, the Friday sermons, the several Islamic holy days, the occasional
Islamic religious feasts (khenduri) to celebrate good fortune or security
or remembrance of the dead, the annual month of fasting and the return of family
and friends from pilgrimage to Mecca. They outweigh the animistic and Hindu-
Buddhist portions of curing rituals and elaborate weddings.
Approximately 80 percent of all Malays live in rural villages. Most of them
farm wet rice and work small plantations of rubber trees. Others work as laborers
on large agricultural estates, as laborers on tin mining dredges or as inshore salt
water fishermen. Many urban Malays are government clerks. Others are laborers,
technicians, factory workers, sales persons, small businessmen or members of
police or military units or government officials. Very few have professional