Is Professor Solehah Yaacob “salah” (wrong)? Her views of history are dubious, but many Malay comments online support her.
Do they represent the majority? They seem like white Maga folks who love Donald Trump even though he keeps spouting dubious “Truth Social” messages.
Many Malay netizens bashed the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) for sacking Solehah.
One Amin S said - “Mereka takut fakta kegemilangan Melayu” (They are afraid of the glorious facts about the Malays). So, he continued, they had to sack her to shut her up.
His comment was in a post by Berita Harian about her sacking. It received more than 443 likes.
A post by Malay news portal Malaysia Gazette got even more strident comments.
One Izack Saujana said Solehah was brave and not “lembu cucuk hidung” (a cow with a nose ring) that could be pulled here and there. He received close to 900 likes.
One Mey Aprielle commented (in uppercase letters):
SEMOGA DR TERUS KUAT MEMBONGKAR SEJARAH MELAYU DAN ISLAM
(Hope doctor keeps boldly exposing the truth of Malay Muslim history). He received 426 likes.
The overall mindset seen is: We are victims of the “conspiracy” of colonial history, and Solehah is our saviour who has revealed the truth. Never mind the fact that in our country, the Malays control all the levers of power, including in public universities.
It's like Trump smartly using racial identity to exploit an “underdog” identity against the so-called “swamp” and “fake news” of the elites.
Fact or fable?
Solehah is infamous for her fantastical claims. In November 2025, she asserted that the Malays taught Romans how to build ships. Forget the inconvenient fact that the designs of the ships were very different.
Last September, she claimed in a Gabungan Nasionalis (Nationalist Coalition) podcast that ancient Malays could fly and even taught the Chinese the art of “flying kung fu”.
Sahul Hamid Maiddin of Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (Upsi) told the Scoop portal, “Such claims are simply not logical. History must be based on sources that can be cross-verified.
“Myths, on the other hand, are folk stories infused with imagination, romanticism and superstition.”
He added that the British encouraged legends so that people would remain lost in fantasies as “escapism”. If so, then it looks like Solehah has taken over that colonial role.
She also implied the Prophet’s wife, Siti Khadijah, may have had links to the Malays. This looked like an attempt to gain some reflected glory.
Most recently, she claimed Kedah’s leaders had Ancient Alien ancestors – just joking, she said Kedah had much iron ore because of deposits from meteors!
Boat cruises of ‘truth’
To refute Solehah, people have to dig into facts and history. But she knows many people lack the ability to look deeper or are too lazy to do so.
There's also “confirmation bias” - the human tendency to look for things that support existing beliefs while ignoring contradictory evidence.
In other words, people believe their prejudices – for example, that DAP is the “greatest threat” to the Malays, even though the huge scandals of Tabung Haji, 1MDB and Felda were linked to Umno.
Yet, Solehah has clearly been proven “salah”. In a 2018 paper for an “Islamic Civilisation Journal”, she wrote that “a group of historians admitted to fabricating Ancient Greece”.
Her proof? An article from satirical news outlet The Onion!
If she doesn't know that satire is not fact, how could she become a professor? This was a classic “kangkung goreng belacan” job.
I had thought that only less educated or poorer people would be fooled by her.
But James Chin, who studies Malaysian politics, pointed out that she has gone on to lead paid boat-cruise tours built around her theories.
For example, Solehah promotes herself as a speaker for the “Islamic Civilisation Voyage 3.0”, a four-day cruise from Port Klang to Phuket in early Dec 3.
During the tour, she will speak on “The Mystery of the Roman Ship Deception”.
Did IIUM review her work?
The Kedah meteors story seemed to be the last straw that broke IIUM’s back.
Shortly after, the university announced on Aug 23 that Solehah had been terminated from service on April 27.
But why delay announcing this by 118 days or four months? Why was she still allowed to go around claiming to be a “professor”? Did she have some special “protection”?
There’s a fresh fracas with Solehah claiming she was “unfairly dismissed” – if so, let IIUM pay compensation. But that’s just a sideshow distraction from more crucial issues.
Chin noted that IIUM finally took action because of the negative publicity. So, he asked, if social media had not exposed her "research", would she still be a professor?
In other words, did anyone internally check her work or peer-review it? If there were, how did she pass them?
If professors at Oxford or Cambridge had made equally bizarre claims without proper proof, how long would they have lasted?
How did Solehah remain as a “professor” long after she was caught for citing The Onion as “evidence”?
A deeper disease?
One academic in a public university told me, “To get promoted, we have to play the racial game, or we get sidelined.”
So the real problem could be: was Solehah tolerated, maybe even encouraged, by the system?
The rewriting of history to glorify one race has been going on for years in Malaysia.
Solehah was just its comical extreme.
Historian Ranjit Singh Malhi has pointed out repeatedly that school history textbooks have covered up the roles of non-Malays in building this country.
For example, the vital role of Chinese tin miners and Indian rubber tappers has been reduced to just a few sentences. The hard work of Indian workers who literally built roads, railways, bridges and ports all over Malaya has also been ignored.
Our country’s Indian (Hindu and Buddhist) past is denied, said Ranjit, even though many Malay words such as suka, duka, kapal, kedai, raja and even bahasa and bumiputera all come from Indian languages.
Even the role of the most bumi of bumiputera, the Orang Asli, has been ignored, lamented Ranjit.
Rightful ‘masters’
All this seems to point in one direction – that this country was first established, then built up by one group.
Therefore, the land belongs to them as the rightful “tuan” or “masters”.
Many embrace this rewritten “truth” as a kind of soothing ubat or drug, as seen in the many online comments supporting Solehah.
It masks the pain of ordinary Malays struggling as food delivery riders or low-level staff while the elite tuan grab most of the wealth.
Who cares about “petty concerns” such as jobs, corruption and education, when people are comforted by Solehah's fables of Maga - Malays Are Great Always. - Mkini
ANDREW SIA is a veteran journalist who likes teh tarik khau kurang manis. You are welcome to give him ideas to brew at tehtarik@gmail.com.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.
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