Egypt's two main Islamist parties have won about two-thirds of the vote in the second round of parliamentary elections.
Getting a good outcome may have to wait awhile as the Egyptians experience the joys of Islamist ideology:
Egyptians working in the tourism industry worry that conservatives in the next parliament may have a negative impact on their business. For tourists this could mean a ban on alcohol and wearing bikinis on the beaches. A spokesman for the Salafi Nour party recently suggested that pharaonic monuments like the Sphinx are idolatrous and should be covered up.
Salafis say they do not want to hurt tourism, though, just make it "sin-free." They have put forth several suggestions, including gender-segregated beaches, and allowing tourists to drink alcohol only in their hotel rooms.
I'm no expert on tourism, but I'm thinking that booking a tour of Egypt where you get to sit in your room and drink alone isn't going to translate well into a brochure. Sin-free vacationing is not a marketing winner--as Thailand could explain to the Egyptians. Are the Egyptians really going to go with, "What happens here, gets lopped off here"?
With the army and elites trying to maneuver between the parliamentary factions, I don't assume the Islamists will seize control of Egypt. I think I can say with certainty that having a pro-American authoritarian ruler for the last three decades didn't create a better voting pool to handle freedom of choice when the people got the chance.
But if the elites can't block the Islamists, since the Islamists are broken into different parties and without oil to conceal the bankruptcy of Islamist-friendly governance, the Islamists in Egypt shouldn't have the option of going down the Iran road (with allowances for being neither Shia nor Persian, of course).
