The Australian race riots targeting Middle Easterners showed that "extremism" is not unique to Arabs and Muslims, said Malaysia, the chair of the world's biggest Islamic grouping.

"It can exist in any community, in any religion," said Syed Hamid Albar, the foreign minister of Malaysia, which currently heads the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

"It shows that extremism is not peculiar to Muslims or to Asia or to Arab-looking people," he told reporters.

White Australians

More than 30 people were wounded and 16 arrested in some of the worst racial violence in Australian history as riots spread from a Sydney beach on Sunday afternoon to neighbouring suburbs overnight.

The violence was launched by mobs of white Australian youths after email and mobile phone messages called for attacks on "Lebs and wogs," racial slurs for people of Lebanese and Mediterranean origin.

The OIC brings together 57 Muslim nations from across the globe.