CAIRO – Islamists are dominating Egypt’s elections and some of them have a new message for tourists: welcome, but no booze, bikinis or mixed bathing at beaches, please.

That vision of turning Egypt into a sin-free vacation spot could spell doom for a key pillar of the economy that has already been badly battered by this year’s political unrest.

“Tourists don’t need to drink alcohol when they come to Egypt; they have plenty at home,” a veiled Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Azza al-Jarf, told a cheering crowd of supporters on Sunday across the street from the Pyramids.

“They came to see the ancient civilization, not to drink alcohol,” she said, her voice booming through a set of loudspeakers at a campaign event dubbed “Let’s encourage tourism.” The crowd chanted, “Tourism will be at its best under Freedom and Justice,” the Brotherhood’s party and the most influential political group to emerge from the fall of Hosni Mubarak.

Since their success in the first round of parliamentary elections on Nov. 28-29, the Brotherhood and the even more fundamentalist party of Salafi Muslims called Al-Nour have been under pressure from media and the public to define their stance on a wide range of issues, especially those related to Islamic law, personal freedoms, the rights of women and minorities, the flagging economy and tourism.

The Salafis of Al-Nour are up front about seeking to impose strict Islamic law in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood says publicly that it does not seek to force its views about an appropriate Islamic lifestyle on Egyptians.

Approximately 2 million Russians visit Egypt every year. They visit the pyramids at Giza and they take cheap charter cruises down the Nile. But however much they may broaden their cultural horizons during their programmed package tours, they don’t go to Egypt for the pharonic ruins or Coptic Churches, they go to Egypt for the sun. More accurately, they go for the opportunity to bare their lily white, sun-starved Russian skin while sitting, without a care in the world, on Red Sea beaches while drinking an astonishing amount of alcohol. They don’t queue up at Cairo’s golf courses, most do not visit the Egyptian museum, they avoid the picturesque Black and White Desert of the interior, and they turn down the 6 hour trip to tour the oasis at Siwa and the marvellous Adrere Amellal Ecolodge.  They go for the sun. And if they are forbidden to wear their speedos and bikinis, and pour back their vodka and Jonnie Walker Red, they just won’t go. And neither will their millions of dollars.

The Muslim Brotherhood and their dogmatic and narrow minded junior partners the Salafists had best figure that out pretty quickly or they will find their grass roots support evaporating away at an alarming rate. Over 8% of Egypt’s labour forces works in, or is associated with, the tourist trade. And those are the official numbers. There will be thousands and thousands of others who reap benefits from foreign dollars spent by the tourists who will also feel the pinch.

If the MB kills the proverbial golden goose with a strict application of their interpretation of Islamic law it will serve to motivate the masses to fill Tahir Square once again. Not that it will matter a whit, filling Tahir Square has become a reduntant exercise in futility. No one cares any more. But it would be an embarrassmnant for a newly formed and possibly vulnerable government. Further, it could have an unexpected domino effect, particularly if the MB’s silent but omnipresent partner, the Military, sees it as a way to curb the MB’s jihadist enthusiasm and rein in some of their more outspoken embarrassments.

It is hard to believe that a nation’s future could be tied to a bikini string.