Rebutting Dr. M again

I read Dr. Mahathir's post titled "Melayu Oh Melayu" with bewilderment and amusement. Anyone who is familiar with his writings knows he favours writing in English but for this particular piece, it is in the national language, Bahasa Malaysia.
It is patently obvious he intends the conservative Malays to read it. The more conservative they are, the better.

Ignorant readers will not question the contents in this article.Instead, they will readily and blindly accept those as sacred truth.
But here I would like to be the devil's advocate and debunk certain myths he tries to propagate.

First and foremost, in his point no. 5; he readily acknowledges no religion is a specific and definite racial marker to any race before expanding it in point no. 6 that a Chinese could also be a Muslim though majority of them are Buddhists. His implied meaning here is that Buddhism is Chinese in origin.

I am surprised that he, like most people are oblivious to the fact that Buddhism was founded by one of the princes in India.
For his information, like the Malays; majority of Chinese profess religions which were once foreign to them, Islam and Buddhism respectively.

The above could be an honest mistake on his part but as you proceed to read his article, you will realise he asserts his belief that the Malays must be Muslims and if they convert out of the religion, then they cease to be Malays.

I am not encouraging the Malays to leave Islam nor do I dare to even think about it but here we can see our former prime minister's inconsistency in his article. Here I would like to ask two questions:

1. Before Islam came into our shores, the Malay ancestors were Hindus and Buddhists. Were they not Malays?
2. So, only when the later generations converted to Islam, did they suddenly become Malays?

As a person trained in the medical field; he should know better that it is not religion that maketh a man, but his DNA!
Besides, "Religion or Humanity"; which one came first? This is not too difficult a question to ask, unlike the "Chicken and Egg" conundrum.

I have begrudging respect for Dr. Mahathir but I feel it is purely out of political reasons that he wrote this article, not sheer ignorance.
Could it be that he underestimates the Malays' thinking capabilities with this propagandic article?
Politics and Religion cannot and must not be made bedfellows. Otherwise, the consequences would be very dire to a county's development and cohesion among its citizens.