Some Arab spring revolutions were launched to divide the countries of the region, Al-Azhar Grand Imam Ahmed El-Tayib has asserted.

"Some Arab spring revolutions brought benefits but others were planned to destroy and divide countries," he said in an interview on Al-Hayat TV channel on Sunday.

The West invented "corrupted" theories in order to steal the wealth of the East, El-Tayib added.

"The East has not met the level of West, the gap is widening between them," he said, adding that there was a conspiracy to keep the East weak.

"The West presented the clash of civilizations theory in order to provoke a clash with Islamic civilization."

"There are non-Western nations with old civilizations that are capable of leading the world in a more reasonable way than the West," El-Tayib said.

Western civilization is in a state of extreme moral, spiritual and religious poverty, he asserted.

However, he noted that Islamic civilization was capable of coexisting with Western civilization.

"The history of Islamic civilization is full of examples of respect for and recognition of the other."