Comment by eaksa
3 days ago
Despite its name, Jawi wasn’t used all that much in Java – it had always been more popular in the Malay peninsula. Java, as with many parts of Indonesia, used Brahmic abugidas descended from the Pallava script of Southern India (just like the Thai and Khmer scripts). Latin was chosen to write the Indonesian language for the same reason Malay was chosen as the language’s base: it was a politically neutral choice to unite a diverse archipelago.
Jawi is also not popular nowadays among the malaysian malays.
Every now and then it will pop up in the news due to politicians using it as a tool to cause racial divide.