Egypt’s new masters are wrecking its long tradition of religious freedom

Almost 1,000 years ago, under the Fatimid caliphate, which at its height stretched from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian peninsula in the east, a potter sat down in his workshop in Cairo and made a bowl. The techniques he used – from the shape of the clay to the metallic glaze and lustre decoration applied after firing – were distinctly Islamic. The priest he painted on the bowl’s interior is unmistakably Christian.