In February 2015, Islamic State militants murdered 21 Coptic Christian migrant workers in an execution-style ceremony. This brutal act of violence elicited strong responses from both the Egyptian state and the Coptic Orthodox Church, with the Egyptian military launching retaliatory airstrikes in Libya, and the Church commemorating the victims as martyrs in its liturgical calendar. These responses contrasted starkly with comments made by the Coptic Church regarding another horrific act of violence: the 2011 killing of Coptic activists by the Egyptian military at the Maspero building Cairo. In December 2014, coinciding with the initial abductions of the Libyan victims, Coptic Pope Tawadros II encouraged Copts to put Maspero behind them and to move on in the sake of national unity. Why then, did one act of violence elicit policy responses and official memorialization while the other was pushed aside? This paper will pursue this question through an exploration of narratives of violence in contemporary Egypt. I approach this topic through the conceptual premise of an “ideal” moment of violence, which I define as an act of violence that, based on its characteristics, can be optimally deployed in service of a particular political narrative. Because of their utility, these moments of violence attain heightened visibility. I argue that Libya as a space is a key element in constructing the 2015 murders as an ideal moment of violence. In Egyptian imagination, Libya since the fall of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011 is characterized by violence and chaos. Imagined as a wild space, Libya serves as foil to the security upon which the Egyptian state legitimizes its authoritarianism, and ultimately offers a cautionary tale for Egyptians on the hazards of revolutions following the uprisings that broke out across the Middle East in 2010-11. Comparing the violence in Libya and Maspero, I identify three core differences that mark the violence in Libya as ideal for the Egyptian state: the perpetrators (nefarious transnational militants), the victims (vulnerable minority migrant workers), and the form (ritualized beheading employing the language of religious difference). Each of these differences, I argue, affirms the contemporary Egyptian imagining of Libya as a dangerous space. Through the lens of Egyptian media and government policy, this paper explores how the tropes of the beleaguered minority, the barbaric other, and the comparative morality of state vs. non-state violence converge in Libya and are employed to legitimize state violence inside and outside of Egypt.