are filipinos malays - yes. malaysians have been indoctrinated to consider only malysians in malaysia who are muslims as malay. malay or melayu is an ethnicity. when malaysia was formed it appropriated for itself the term malay-sia and has excluded other malays from the definition. the brunieans are malays but they are not malaysians, the filipinos too are malays. The root language of many filipino languages except up the north (ilokos) is malay. sulu and brunei are cousin sultanates (their royal families are cousins) and so is the kingdom of seludong (manila) who were ruled by the bolkiah family (of brunei). The bisaya and its various ethnic groups i.e the ilonggo, karay-a, akeanon etc are also malays. the ilonggo, karay-a and akeanon are very much malay considering that their oral history tells them that they are descendants of bruneian exiles in the 12 century after sri vijaya collapsed and still consider a bendahara patih (putih but in karay-a the letter u is pronounced a "uh or ah sound) as one of their founding fathers. In language the philippine and bornean language are grouped together as the borneo - philippine languages due to language similarities. and in fact the majority of the philippines was part of the bruniean empire until the defeat of brunei in the spanish - bruneian war which saw brunei lose its territory of manila, and the visayan islands. in previous centuries the lucoes (of Luzon) sent paraws and other ships to help melaka against the portuguese. In fact when the spanish and magellan arrived in the philippines visayan island of sugbo/singhapala (modern day cebu) they were able to talk to the locals through an interpreter - Enrique of mallaca who was a slave of magellan (captured in the portuguese atttack on melaka). Of course not all filipinos are malays but not all malaysians are malays as well. However, whatever malaysians or singaporena think of filipinos -we know we are malays. Brtish colonialism shaped malaysians and conditioned them to exclude others - in a tactic of divide and conquer employed by spain against the filipinos as well. For 300 years the philippines was cut of from the rest of the world and shaped in the image of spain. only after 300 years have we delved back into our roots. The philippine flag flies with the 8 rayed sun (the original flag was 8 rayed sun in red and whit color) - revisionism in philippine history told us that it symbolized the first 8 provinces to rise up against spain. but in fact the 8 rayed sun and the red and white were much older symbols for our people - one inhereted from the great malay empire of madjapahit. Even our national anthem has changed. the original in spanish started with: tierra del ardiente, hija del sol de oriente (land of the brave, daughter of the orient/eastern sun). right now its changed to bayang magiliw, perlas ng silanganan (in tagalog) Or land of the brave, pearl of the orient (english). Kami anak kang adlaw it sa silanganan,ako karay-a , isa ka melayu pilipino ^^ (we re children of the eastern sun, i am a karay-a, one of the filipino malays). sama sama! p.s. all filipino are austronesians i.ie malay race, but not all filipinos are ethnic malays (tribe). only panay and sulu and to some extent manila and surrounding areas are ethnic malays by blood. However due to marriages - most filipinos would have ethnic malay blood.