Malayness as a Dynamic Construction of Malay Identity Through Cultural Interaction

Malayness is often understood as an identity associated with ethnicity, language, Islam, adat, and cultural heritage. However, treating Malay identity as a fixed and homogeneous category tends to obscure the historical and cultural processes through which Malayness has been formed and continuously reconstructed. This article aims to analyze Malayness as a dynamic construction of Malay identity formed through cultural interaction. The study employs a qualitative library research approach by examining scholarly literature on cultural identity, Malay ethnicity, Islam and Malay identity, language, adat, colonial knowledge, and contemporary cultural transformation. The data were analyzed through thematic interpretation and comparative synthesis. The findings indicate that Malayness cannot be reduced to a single primordial or essential identity. Its formation has been influenced by historical mobility, maritime trade, linguistic interaction, Islamization, political institutions, adat, colonial classification, and contemporary cultural exchanges. Islam has become an important component of Malay identity in many historical and contemporary contexts, but the relationship between Islam and Malayness should be understood historically rather than as an unchanging essence. Cultural practices, language, arts, and collective memory function as mechanisms through which Malayness is reproduced, negotiated, and transformed. In the contemporary period, digital media further expands the arena in which Malay identity is represented and contested. Therefore, Malayness is better understood as an open and relational cultural process in which continuity and change operate simultaneously.