The religious tide will not affect the tourism sector as its foundations are strong and no official, regardless of their political affiliations, will be able to interfere with it, said Tourism Minister Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour according to CNNArabic.com.
Abdel Nour, a former Wafd Party MP and Mubarak regime opponent launched an attack on media that only “focuses on political movement, ignoring the positives” in Egypt, pointing out that this coverage “will harm Egyptian tourism.”
Abdel Nour went on to say that “Parliament, with its Islamist majority, respects the freedom and security of the tourists in the general sense,” explaining that “the statements issued every now and then concerning Haram and Halal [forbidden and permissible in Islam] tourism come from people in non-official positions and therefore, I was keen on ensuring that the People’s Assembly’s Speaker issue a statement confirming the importance of tourism to Egypt.”
According to CNN, Abdel Nour said that “the Egyptian tourism sector is of great economic importance, so any official, regardless of his fundamentalist religious affiliations would not make decisions that would harm it. Tourism accounted for over 11 percent of the Egypt’s GDP and is the second greatest source of foreign exchange in Egypt’s economy, not to mention the fact that there are over four million employees in this sector, representing 1 out of every 6.5 people in the Egyptian labor force.”
