Not learning english will hurt themselves in the international markets.
Not just alot of tourism but also business is often conducted in english.
it has immensely and will continue to do so. there was an article i read a few weeks ago about the country passing some stupid law to OUTLAW "minglish" - the mixture of english and malay spoken daily, patois is another word for it. there will be language police out and about making sure than no one screws with malay by adding english and mandarin words.
my maternal family are strewn across western malaysia - malacca to k.l., keland, selangor, johor, etc...the core of them came from portuguese malacca (portuguese settlement) and speak a patois form of portuguese called 'papia kristang'. they speak an even worse patois in certain instances depending on the company they're around - portuguese, malay, english, mandarin, & tamil all blended together! ("cristao" was the dialect of portuguese spoken and "cristang" or "kristang" (to mean christian, person)is how the malays referred to the portuguese and their descendents, the name for the portuguese when they conquered and settled malacca in the 1500s. papia kristang is the patois blend of 15th century portuguese & malay. portuguese is responsible for contributing at least 500 words or more to the malay language.
so see, even without that kind of 'western influence', these dunces wouldn't even have a language!!!!!!!! *sarc*)