Tun Syed Nasir bin Syed Ismail (Arabic: سيد ناصر بن سيد إسماعيل Sayyid Nāṣir bin ʼIsmāʻīl; 7 March 1921[1]– 16 March 1982) was a Speaker of the Dewan Rakyat, the lower house of the Parliament of Malaysia.
During his lifetime, he was known as a nationalist who sought to fight for the primacy of the national language in Malaysia as a means to create a national identity through the closing down of public-funded Mandarin and Tamil vernacular schools.
Tun Syed Nasir sees a common education system for all as a solution to this dilemma.
A prominent politician from the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) – the leading party of the governing Barisan Nasional coalition – he served as the 5th Speaker of the Dewan Rakyat from 1978 till his death in 1982.
He was born in Batu Pahat,[1] Johor, Malaysia, and is of Hadhrami Arab descent.