According to Muhyiddin, the modern developed countries' immigration laws were designed to attract the inflow of high economic value adding intellectuals and professionals.
The deputy prime minister explained that this was to help sustain their rate of high economic growth.
"They have succeeded, with various attractive additional pull factors on offer, such as an intellectually stimulating environment and an effective reward and recognition system amongst others," said Muhyiddin.
Muhyiddin said that in the last 50 years, many intellectuals had migrated from the Muslim world to the industrialized countries.
In Arab world alone, this number had reached hundreds of thousands, apparently constituting a third of the entire diaspora of professionals from developing countries to the developed West, said Muhyiddin.
Muhyiddin warned that the situation would become worse if not adequately addressed.
He cited the example in India that the issue of brain drain in the country was reversed with India liberalizing its economic structure and adopting market friendly reward system.
