ANKARA (AA): Muslim-majority countries should build their own markets andproduce their own technologies to become self-sufficient, Malaysian PrimeMinister Mahathir Mohammad said on Thursday.
Speaking at a forum during the ongoing Kuala Lumpur Summit, he stressed theimportance of technological and industrial progress in national development.
“There are 1.7 billion Muslims. Obviously this is a big market if we decideto source our needs from Muslims and Muslim countries. Then we enrichourselves.
“But because we [Muslim countries] have not enough products by ourselves,we have to source most of our needs from other countries, and our moneyflows out. When money flows out, we become poor. But if we source, thethings that we need from Muslim countries, then obviously our wealth willstay within the Muslim community, and we become richer,” he said.
“That is why among the things that should solve problems of Muslims is tobuild a market and produce the things and source them from each other butit is important we learn how to produce our own things,” he added.
He underlined that Muslim nations “will forever be playing catch-up” withthe rest of the developed world “if we do not start creating and developingour own technologies.”
“We have no choice but to start working on this,” he said.
‘Learning from Turkey’
Praising development of the Turkish defense industry, Mahathir called forcooperation among Muslim-majority countries to become independent of theWest.
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“Turkey has gone very deeply into defense, into equipping itself with thedefense equipment. And Malaysia is learning from Turkey,” he added,speaking alongside the Turkish and Iranian presidents.
“We are here to listen to ideas that can help us establish good governanceand how to establish stability in our countries. There is no doubt withoutstability there can be no development,” he replied to a question, addingthat a strong economy was “vital for a country to remain independent”.
Mahathir, the world’s oldest serving head of any government, said that forgrowing a stronger economy “Muslim countries need stability”.
Mahathir maintained that cooperation among Muslim countries did nottranslate into boycotting non-Muslim nations.
“But if you source or sell things to non-Muslim countries, sometimes theysanction you [Muslim countries], and you lose what you need and you becomehelpless and they can apply more pressure,” he said explaining whyMuslim-majority countries need to develop technologies to be independent.
“But if they apply pressure [when Muslim countries are self-sufficient],then that sanction would not work at all,” he said.
The three-day Kuala Lumpur Summit is ongoing in the Malaysian capital withthe attendance of hundreds of government officials and representatives fromcivil society and business sectors from across the Muslim World.
