I refer to the letter M'sian embassy signage: Why not Bahasa Malaysia too? regarding the signage at the Malaysian Embassy in Washington US. The writer regrets that it was (purportedly) written in Arabic. I cringe at the thought that Malaysians, for lack of exposure or ignorance, cannot tell the difference between Bahasa Malaysia and Arabic.
In the 80s, when Jawi was taught in national schools throughout the country as one of the topics in BM, you would find even non-Malays being able to read Jawi. However, the situation has now worsened. Not only are they not conversant in Jawi, they fail completely in understanding the history of the Malay language.
It must be pointed out that Bahasa Melayu or Malaysia, did not appear in its Romanised form until much later in the 20th Century. Classical Malay texts such as 'Tuhfat Al-Nafis' or 'Sejarah Melayu' (Malay Annals) were all written in Malay.
BM in its original form is in Arabic characters and hence the terminology `Jawi'. Arabic is totally different. For example, Chinese characters may appear in Japanese, however, I would believe the Japanese would be offended if they are called Chinese. They remain two distinct languages.
If the non-Malays could even take offence with the use of Jawi and call it Arabic, then it is doomsday for the future of integration as it only exemplifies the unspoken (or not, as the case may be) aversion they may have towards anything `Malay' and `Islamic'.
Jawi is part of the history of BM. After the Romanised form was used fully post-1972, we witnessed a decline in the understanding of BM in its original form ie. with Jawi characters. If one were to study the language, there are a lot of BM words which could have been better `pronounced' had the Jawi characters been used.
Jawi is part of the national heritage and the least one could do is respect its existence on signboards. We cannot let it die or we will have a generation unable to read the classical texts and unable to appreciate the past. This is not a racial issue, it is about history.
