BEFORE he stepped down in mid-February 2011, Hosni Mubarak said there would be “chaos” in Egypt without him. He was not making a prediction. Perhaps he was uttering a curse. But maybe too, he was saying something logical. People could even say: Mubarak was right.

In the first week of May 2011, in the district of Imbaba in Cairo some Muslims tried to force entry into a Coptic Church. They demanded that a woman named Abeer be freed. They were