Archbishop Says Countries Should Not Panic About Immigrants

The Archbishop of Canterbury recently said that countries should not "panic" about immigrants or succumb to the belief that a standoff between Islamic and Western culture was inevitable.

Some Muslims in Europe have complained of increasing "Islamophobia". Six Muslim clerics said they were victims of discrimination after being removed from a US Airways flight earlier this week.

Dr Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans, in Rome to hold his first official meeting with Pope Benedict on Thursday, made his comments in a lecture at a university.

"The migrant group that is prepared to work within the civic framework of a host society, that aspires simply to citizenship, is one whose voice in the community overall is of significance alongside those who have a longer history and a political or economic advantage," he said.

Dr Williams, delivering a lecture themed on the influence of the 6th century St Benedict on history, said countries should not "panic about migrants".

Governments should work to better recognise "the gifts and the needs of the incoming stranger who is seeking not simply hospitality but shared belonging".

Dr Williams said it was facile to think Islamic civil ideals and Christian or Western ones were so different that they could not even be compared.

He said societies should instead strive to determine how to shape "a common civic purpose" out of the new diversities.

The Archbishop of Canterbury did not make any reference to a controversy in several European countries, including Britain and Italy, over the use of some Muslim veils by Islamic woman immigrants.

Dr Williams is in Rome to mark the 40th anniversary of the historic meeting between his predecessor, Archbishop Michael Ramsey, and Pope Paul VI in 1966.

That was the first formal meeting between the heads of the two churches since Henry VIII broke with Rome in the 16th century.