MtheM said "That will be a great comfort to Mrs Rigby" or words to that effect, in response to a suggestion that the muslim community is not seen as a security threat. It's a pity he didn't read the Rigby family's comments before exploiting Mrs Rigby for his own purpose. It's fairly clear that the Rigbys themselves do not see the muslim community as a threat.

Thread drift: It is a sectarian religious war that has already spread to Iraq and beginning in Lebanon.

That's way too glib, Keith. It has become sectarian, as is often the case with insurrections (cf the relatively mini-commotion in Northern Ireland). But it started as a protest against brutal governance, the protesters believing for some reason that western-style democracy might work in Syria. They forgot that before Bashar Al Asad and his dad Hafez, Syria was virtually ungovernable, with a coups almost yearly.

But for all its manifest sins, the Asad dynasty (part of the Allawi sect, which only in recent times got attached to the fringes of Shia Islam) has stuck to a broadly sectarian line. In fact the Asads have governed rather like Saddam in Iraq, but a good bit more brutally. And as with Iraq, it was madness to think that taking on the regime would make things better. Apart from anything else, militant Shia fundamentalists glimpse the possibility of an Islamic state emerging from the vacuum, and Sunni wealth in Qatar and elsewhere has rushed to bankroll the rebels in support of Syria's Sunni majority. In short, it's a Holy mess into which the UK government is itching to pour more weaponry.