Unlike Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Nour Party promises blanket-ban on alcohol and beach tourism in event it takes power following polls.
The Salafist Al-Nour Party would enforce a ban on serving alcohol to foreigner nationals and Egyptian citizens alike if it came to power, party spokesman Nader Bakar told tourism-sector workers in Aswan on Monday.
Speaking at a public rally in the Upper Egyptian city’s Midan El-Mahatta, Bakar clarified that the party would only allow tourists to drink liquor they brought with them from abroad, and only in their hotel rooms.
He added that the party did not plan to set any restrictions on tourism related to Egyptian antiquities, such as the Great Pyramids of Giza and ancient Egyptian temples.
Bakar went on to say that the Al-Nour Party would establish a chain of hotels that would function in compliance with Islamic Law, while banning beach tourism, which, he said, “induces vice.”
On Saturday, Mohamed Morsi, president of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), told Ahram that his party, by contrast, did not plan on banning alcohol in hotels and at tourist resorts or, for that matter, prevent Egyptians from drinking liquor in their homes.
The Al-Nour Party won nineteen percent of the vote in the first round of Egypt`s first post-Mubarak parliamentary polls late last month, while the FJP secured thirty percent.
[Developed in partnership with Ahram Online.]
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