First the bad news:
Yes, indeed, the strong showing by the Salafi Nour Party is disturbing. Salafis don't speak with one voice, but some preach hatred of Christians on satellite channels allegedly funded by Saudis and Qataris, and some have attacked Christians and burned churches.
Salafi clerics have called for banning interest-bearing loans, alcohol, and "fornication," while limiting rights for women and Copts. They want to tighten the loose constitutional proviso that all laws be compliant with sharia, and have clerics certify that laws are sharia-compliant. And they want to censor culture: Prominent Salafi candidate Abdel Moneim al-Shahat denounced the works of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz as "atheist literature."
Last month, I interviewed the Nour party spokesman, Mohammed Nour (whose name is coincidental), at his public-relations firm in the upscale Cairo suburb of Mahdi. He wore a suit with a striped shirt, and his modern office sported black walls with orange couches and chrome armrests; a female office secretary wore a headscarf and long skirt, but her face was uncovered. Nour said his party was misunderstood, but his comments said otherwise.
"We are always going to believe the Islamic system is better than democracy," he said. Salafis reversed their previous objection to elections, he said, only because they saw that the ballot had become a vehicle for political change.
But, he added: "You can't have laws that conflict with sharia. The laws before the revolution were all corrupt laws."
The Nour party would rule out sales of alcohol, or the wearing of bikinis, thus crippling resorts that bring essential tourist revenues to Egypt.
