/ 10 May 2013

Egypt resorts to orthodox travel

Egypt Resorts To Orthodox Travel

The owners of the 4Win hotel in Hurghada recently uncorked the entire contents of their drinks cabinet, and poured it down their stairs.

Attended by a Salafi sheikh, and by supporters chanting “Allah is great”, the event marked the opening of the first hotel in the Red Sea resort — a Westernised tourist town where much of the signage is in English and Russian — that promises to cater for religiously conservative guests.

“Many Middle Eastern men won’t come to Hurghada because they won’t get the privacy they require,” said 4Win’s manager and co-owner, Abdelbasset Omar. “We’re trying to fill that gap.”

Omar said female guests will stay on a women-only floor guarded by female security personnel, and will also have the option of swimming in a segregated pool. The bar is alcohol-free, and images of musicians Elvis Presley and Shakira have been removed from the walls. But the transformation is not entirely complete: paid-for pornography channels have not yet been removed from the hotel’s televisions.

“It gives me the chance to enjoy tourism in my own country in a way that does not contradict my beliefs,” said one of the hotel’s first guests, Abdel Rahman — an electronics engineer from Cairo. “Especially the privacy for women — they can enjoy swimming now with no problems.”

“I’m very glad that this hotel has been opened,” said Sheikh Khaled Saeed, who spoke at the opening. “It helps to better reflect a real image of Egyptian society.”

Western tourism in Egypt has fallen since the 2011 uprising — one hotelier said his hotel’s occupancy was down by 50%, while nationwide numbers have fallen by over a fifth in the past two years. In this light, 4Win’s existence is partly seen as a clever attempt to make up for the shortfall with a different kind of tourist. “It’s a smart move,” said Adel Ibrahim, the owner of Canary Hotel, another Hurghada inn. “It’ll attract conservative guests — both from the Gulf and from Egypt.”

4Win is not Egypt’s first no-alcohol hotel. But for some, the hotel — particularly its touristy location, and its segregated nature — is one of several developments that suggest Egypt has become more Islamised since the fall of Hosni Mubarak. “The previous regime wouldn’t have allowed this kind of hotel because it wouldn’t have reflected the image Mubarak would have wanted,” said Omar.

Islamists are not a homogenous bloc. Ultra-orthodox Salafist politicians are increasingly at odds with the less doctrinal Muslim Brotherhood, whose associates are Egypt’s largest political force. But more generally, their members and their ideas have become increasingly visible.

Between them, Islamist parties have a majority in Parliament — however divided they may now be. President Mohamed Morsi, a Brotherhood affiliate, seeks to introduce the controversial sukuk, an Islamist version of a government bond. Islamic singers — banned under Mubarak — are making a comeback. Alcohol restrictions have been tightened and in a middle-class district of east Cairo, a new segregated Salafi café has garnered much media attention. Elsewhere in Hurghada, threats from Islamists forced the closure of an anti-Islamist play.

But liberals and leftists emphasise that the 2011 uprising has amplified not only conservative trends, but also progressive voices and secular activism. The weekend the 4Win opened, a group of young Egyptians stood outside the famous Library of Alexandria. They called themselves the Almaneyoun, or the Secularists, and they chanted: “No to the Islamic state. No to religious rule. Egypt is a secular state.”

Above their heads they held their state ID cards — with the controversial section that states their religion symbolically scrubbed off.

“To highlight what the Salafis or the Muslim Brotherhood are doing misses out the larger picture,” said Professor Khaled Fahmy, a prominent commentator and head of history at the American University in Cairo. “For sure, since the revolution we have seen a religious discourse that is very pronounced and even extremist. But we have also seen an amazing effervescence of art, of music and of poetry.”

Fahmy pointed to the graffiti artists whose murals now cover many Egyptian city centres; political poets such as Mostafa Ibrahim; and arts events such as Cairo’s downtown contemporary arts festival (D-caf) — all of whose work was partly en-abled by the political vacuum created by the 2011 uprising. — © Guardian News & Media 2013

Additional reporting by Mowaffaq Safadi