Shedding Light

There's a programme on BBC World entitled Impact, featuring Mishal Husain interviewing various luminaries on pressing issues of the moment. Tonight it opened with ten minutes or so of Ms Husain asking some nicely pointed questions of Prof Tariq Ramadan regarding current events in Egypt, with a particular emphasis on the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood there - Prof Ramadan's granddad having been amongst its founding members, of course. The good prof gave some nicely pointed answers and I felt I was genuinely beginning to grasp something about what might be taking place on the streets of Cairo and other fabled places. I was grateful to BBC World for the ten minutes - which I wasn't likely to get anywhere else - but part of me wondered why we couldn't have a couple of hours, or more. The other part knew the answer - one which doesn't reflect too well on our species and its powers of concentration.

One small point I really, really wanted to hear more about, and would have welcomed other informed voices commenting on. Ms Husain rightly raised accusations of members of the Brotherhood setting fire to Coptic churches in recent days. Prof Ramadan was very dubious as to whether any of this had been the work of the Islamists. It seems that the Muslim Brotherhood historically has had very good, even close, relations with the Coptic Church. It didn't add up, he noted, and conjectured that the army may have been setting the fires.

I'd like to know who's responsible, but I suspect I'm not going to find out with any degree of certainty until the flames have long died down, and possibly not even then. The problem is that there are a lot of people who are sure they know when they don't.