But Islamist lawmaker, Azza al Jarf, says Egyptian officials need to rethink their approach to tourism. She argues that appealing to Muslim visitors abroad and domestically, will boost tourism. So would hosting more international conferences here. She adds that separate beaches for women and curbing public consumption of alcohol wouldn't affect these new markets or even the old ones. Such pronouncements are naive, says Elhamy el-Zayat, who chairs the Egyptian Tourism Federation and runs a company specializing in conference tourism. He says he's talked with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists, at length, about their tourism proposals and why they won't work. He believes that once the Islamists are in power and faced with the financial reality, they will stop trying to make Egyptian tourism conform to a more conservative Islamic lifestyle. If they were not pragmatic, could they have collected so many votes? They were very pragmatic and very sly, we have to remember this. Hisham Galal, a vendor in the Khan el-Khalili market, warns that if Islamists don't back down, he and many other Egyptians will hold mass protests to force them out of office, just like they did with Mubarak. Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, NPR News, Cairo. Christmas has yet to arrive in Egypt, where the Coptic Christian minority celebrates January 7th. A leader of one of the most conservative Islamist parties has declared it will be un-Islamic for Muslims even to wish Christians well on Christmas. The Coptic Christian pope says people of all faiths should be invited to Christmas celebrations, including radical Muslims. And the most prominent Muslim group, the Muslim Brotherhood, has taken the conciliatory approach, actually pledging to protect Christian churches.