Once started, religious strife has a tendency to go on and on - to become permanent feuds. Today we see such intractable inter-religious wars in Northern Ireland, between Jews and Muslims and Christians in Palestine, Hindus and Muslims in South Asia and in many other places. Attempts to bring about peace have failed again and again. Always the extremist elements invoking past injustices, imagined or real, will succeed in torpedoing the peace efforts and bringing about another bout of hostility.

I'm a fundamentalist in the true sense. That is to say, I follow the fundamentals of religion... But for over 1,400 years people have been interpreting and re-interpreting the religion to suit their own purpose! ... These [extremist and terrorist acts] are not Islamic fundamentals any more than the Christians who burned people at the stake are fundamentalist. They are actually deviating from the teachings of the religion!

Even in South Africa, the Commonwealth were not doing anything, and their attitude was to tolerate apartheid in South Africa. There was a lot of lip service being paid to the need to stop this practice, but nothing was done.

When I became Prime Minister, I looked back on what was done before – what were the policies and actions before – and I thought that I need to be critical if I’m going to do anything at all.

Some people say that we here have no freedom of religion, ... In reality, the people in that country are the ones who were forced to embrace a religion.

Knowledge has always been important, of course. The ancient Egyptians did not raise the stones for the pyramids relying on the incantations of their gods. The waters in the irrigation canals of the great Indus Civilisation did not flow according to the laws of ignorance. Knowledge has always been power and wealth.

Most developing countries would know Malaysia quite well. Why? It is because we believe in contacts. We offer them some help for training, for example. We call it 'technical cooperation'.