The vast majority of British Muslims feel "paralysed" by events in Iraq and Syria, the first Islamic figure to address the General Synod said.

Dr Fuad Nahdi, an interfaith activist and journalist, told the Church of England body that younger, weaker Muslims were reacting with frustration and in some cases anger to the conflicts which have seen members of both faiths slaughtered.

He told the assembly in London it was important that the two religions should learn more about each other to help them live peacefully side by side.

He said: "The vast majority of the Muslim community in this country are paralysed by what is going on. They are looking for prophetic action and they are finding none. What is going on is totally incomprehensible. It questions a lot of things.

"The pressure that is being put, indirectly, particularly on our young people to try and explain things for which they are not (and) never were able to say or do anything (about) thousands of miles away, it makes the weaker ones among them react in different ways.

"One of them would be to be frustrated, to be reactionary, to find somebody to blame rather than look at the situation in a cool and calculated way.

"But the most awful way is to get engaged in anger. It is anger which they talk about and anger makes logic."

Dr Nahdi greeted the Synod with a traditional Islamic greeting of "peace be upon you" as he joined a panel including the Bishops of Coventry and Leeds and Bishop Angaelos, the leader of the Coptic Christian Church in the UK, to discuss the horrific violence enveloping the Middle East.

Dr Nahdi, is executive director of the Radical Middle Way faith group and founding editor of Muslim magazine Q News and a member of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Listening Initiative on Christian-Muslim Relations between 2001 and 2004.

He said that Muslims were bearing the brunt of "heinous" crimes carried out in the name of "extremism, fanaticism and idiocy" and it was up to religious leaders to show that the religions could co-exist.

He added that one of his biggest spiritual influences has been a Church of England bishop.

He said: "We must share the example about co-existence. We must show compassion.

"But above all things we must take away ignorance and must fight ignorance. Most importantly we must also have faith, and faith lies in prayer."

Attacking the "extremist craziness" of groups like Islamic State he added said that Christians should not be forced to leave their homes in Muslim majority countries.

He said: "Do we just give them passports to come here? I don't this is a good idea for two reasons.

"One, they should not be forced to leave. But secondly it is good for the Muslims in the Muslim lands to have Christians amongst them because it enhances their own spirituality and their own understanding of God."