Sorry, but the burka pales to insignificance....

Excellent, ga! Thank you.

Seconded

Well said ga. The chidren's charities need more support than ever, after recent bad publicity about some CEOs' hefty salaries.

Grannyactivist, you are so right, it doesn't matter how little we can do, what matters is we do all we can. I campaigned against apartheid from the fifties to the nineties, me , refusing to own one piece of gold, sitting outside SA embassy, writing letters to prisoners in Pretoria etc didn't change a thing , millions doing the same did .

I still find it strange that the OP seems to suggest that everyone else on gransnet has stuck their heads in the sand, ignored this bloody civil war and just chatters on about inconsequential matters. It has been going on since March 2011 and over 100,000 people have died as a result. I, for one, do not need to be addressed in that tone of voice in order to take whatever action I feel is right. Or is this simply a competition about who feels most passionately?

And I repeat again that the more negative items about Muslims in the press, not differentiating between the peaceful , ordinary majority and the minority extremists who aren't really Muslim but political militants hardens our responses to humanitarian aid in Muslim countries.

Was there a thread expressing shock and horror at the Muslim family death in a fire recently? Might have missed it but maybe the family was so unlike 'us' we did not empathise?

Oh we did empathise! Same as we are, hopefully, emphasising with the people caught up in the shootings in Nairobi. No point in starting threads. Never gets much response.

Absent - you are just being your usual pleasant self.

That is what I mean J08.

Perhaps we should call the trouble making muslims Islamists instead, pen, and keep muslim for normal people.

Or we could call them warring factions in Syria.

j08 And you are being your usual self.

thatbags I would think warring factions would be the best term. Although it's a civil war, there are more than two sides to it and, while religious differences play a part, they are far from the sole cause.

Absent - I thought it was just me that resented the suggestion that I need a swear word to make me care about Syria. I found that bloody patronising. I've cared about many issues over the last 5 decades in a variety of ways - as Annie says, sometimes expressed in actions of various kinds, sometimes with money if that was appropriate. I can, at the same time, have views about burkas - it's not a competition. I certainly don't need 'clit slitting' JO8 to prod me into behaving and caring and I've foundvyhiscyhread a disgrace in a variety of ways

Found this thread