On Sunday and Monday this week I noticed an unusual spike in the views of this blog. A post I had written in April 2012 was attracting far more traffic than normal. Entitled ‘Applying the Cross (On Your Wrist)‘, all sorts of search engines were directing queries my way, looking for ‘Coptic crosses’, ‘Coptic tattoo’, and the like. Later they day I think I found out why.
On Sunday, the popular American television news magazine ’60 Minutes’ ran a segment on Coptic Christians. One of the more poignant snapshots was of a little girl being tattooed with a small cross on her right wrist. That location featured is in a popular cave church located in the garbage collecting district of Cairo, and I had profiled the tattoo man in the post linked above.
In a post two years earlier I wrote a similar article about my then four year old daughter, who drew a cross on her wrist at her Coptic preschool. ‘Emma’s Saliib‘, with ‘saliib’ the Arabic word for ‘cross’, has a few cute pictures if you are interested.
But of the program in question, CBS did a very nice job describing the Coptic community – true to form without being overdone. Please click here to watch their 15 minute segment.
And finally, if you would like more information about Bishop Thomas, who spoke about the response of Christians after their churches were burned, here is a profile, entitled ‘Almost a Jonah‘.
Having lived here for four years now, we are very partial to the Coptic community, noticing both its faithfulness and flaws. 60 Minutes made me proud.
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/the-coptic-christians-of-egypt/
Jayson Casper 
3 replies on “60 Minutes on the Copts of Egypt”
Greatly enjoyed this! Mary Massoud
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Thank you, Mary.
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Hi Jayson , thanks for this, It was great but when are the western Press going to stop their misinformation, and actually look up the meaning of the word Coup. Yet again 4 months after Kelly said it was not a coup they insist that it was a violent overthrow., It was sudden and and it was illegal. Firstly it was brought about by peaceful demonstration Morsi was given two day to call elections, and he if he didn’t, they would remove him from office. This was in fact extended by 24 hours, so that throws out the sudden and violent, which leaves the illegal. However as both the president and the MB had acted illegally, although two wrong do not make a right, this has together with the shear numbers of Peaceful demonstrators which numbered nearly three times the number of those who voted in the election 30 + million demonstrators to 13,230,131voters according to wikapedia.
My second point on misinformation is his quote that nearly a thousand mb supporters were killed on clearing of the so called peace camps on the 14th August. over the period of two months I agree nearly a thousand people not MB died but out of this figure over 100 were police and army personal. then you need to take into account the number of christians who were killed followed by the number of mb supporters who were either tortured or used as canon fodder by mb snipers to get the security forces to start shooting. this probably reduces the numbers by another 2-300 people leaving about 600 people who the majority were imported from across the world, brainwashed or bribed to be there and had publicly stated they were going to fight to the death for their cause.
I will of course copying and pasting this to CBS
Have they cleaned up the walls of the presidential palace in Heliopolis and other parts of the city to show peoples views of Morsi, because at the time of your video blog on the walls of Maadi, think it would have been useful to have shown the other side of the coin.
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