The Malay Heritage Centre (MHC) was opened in June 2005. MHC acts as a vital heritage institution for the Malay community in Singapore. Information and artifacts displayed in the MHC shows how the Malay community in Singapore lived and evolved. The MHC aims to give its visitor a feel of being part of the Malay community in the past, from day to day work to entertainment.
Once you start your tour in the MHC, the “tribal” music in the background sets the mood for the rest of your journey. The MHC was only focussing the Malay community in Singapore, which I felt unnecessary and should not be the case. The Malays came from all over the
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Malay archipelago and some even came from other countries and got recognised as Malays by the Malay community…show more content… MHC only focused on the former. However, initially the Malay community was only concerned with religious education and did not regard circular education as important or necessary. There were plenty of Madrasahs and Pondoks even before the arrival of the modern education. It was not an easy task to make the Malay community accept circular education. The MHC seems to only acknowledge circular education as “proper education”.
In terms of politics, the MHC only showcases those who supported and those who benefitted from the colonial rule. Like in the picture above and our first president, Tun Yusof bin Ishak, who received the Queens Scholarship when he enrolled into Raffles Institution. Madrasahs provided up to tertiary education. There plenty of scholars from these madrasahs. However, the MHC did not showcase even one of these scholars. It is as if none of them contributed to the…show more content… 14, 15, cited in Arnold 1896, pp. 1). However, Islam only started to spread rapidly after Malacca was converted to Islam. The main reason for this is that Malacca was one of the biggest port cities in the Malay archipelago and it had great influence over the other port cities. Islam spread through various ways. One of these ways is through trade (Dr Khairudin, lecture 3). Traders from many part of the world, such as Arabia, India, China and etc, came to the Malay archipelago to trade as these region had spices that were in demand. Many of these traders were muslims. It was common for traders to come to this region of the world and stay for a long period of time and find a wife here. It was also common for Malay women to marry across culture and tradition as they remarried. And many Malays also felt that converting to Islam would make it “easier” for them to trade as they will have a commonality between them and the traders from around the