Another atrocity

I've been vaguely aware for a while, especially after reading about various atrocities in Pakistan and the hyperactive assault on ancient Sufi shrines in Mali, that Sufi Muslims (the mystical ones) have become yet another of the seemingly endless prime targets for vicious fundamentalist Muslims. 

Watching tonight's Newsnight on the horrific slaughter of Sufi worshippers in Sinai, apparently by Islamic State groupies, only confirms to me that this is yet another murderous problem provoked by the apparently inexorable spread of Islamic fundamentalism.

We'll doubtless be seeing it in the UK soon, following attacks on the Ahmadiyya and the Shia here.

Tonight's Newsnight also saw Mark Urban - one of the BBC's finest - firmly applying the brakes to one of Kirsty Wark's half-baked assertions. Kirsty boldly asserted that today's attack was unprecedented. Mark, evidently somewhat taken aback, replied that that's too sweeping a statement. 

In fact Kirsty's performance during that entire section felt disappointingly under-researched and knee-jerk (in a "London liberal outlook" kind of way). 

She seemed particularly keen to suggest that military aggression shown by the Egyptian authorities might have been (somehow) ultimately responsible for today's attack. 

In that light I wasn't at all surprised when Colonel Richard Kemp tweeted the following tonight about this particular Newsnight segment:

BBC churning out all these so-called experts to blame Egyptian security forces for ISIS attacks in Sinai. Trotting out many platitudes but no alternative to military solution.