• Egypt branded more dangerous for tourists than Yemen

    Nasser Nasser / AP

    A foreign tourist takes a souvenir picture with an Egyptian guard during a visit to the Hatshepsut Temple, in Luxor, Egypt on Feb. 27, 2013.

    By Atia Abawi and Charlene Gubash, NBC News

    Tourists have long flocked to Egypt to see the pyramids, take a trip up the majestic Nile or relax on one of its many sun-kissed beaches.

    But, in a potentially damaging blow to its economy, Egypt has now been ranked below countries such as Pakistan, Yemen and Chad for "safety and security" in an influential report on tourism by the World Economic Forum.

    It is perhaps little wonder that tourists are spooked — amid ongoing political unrest, Molotov cocktails, gunfire and tear gas have become almost commonplace in some areas.

    Thousands of anti-government protesters gathered in Tahrir Square to mark the 2011 uprising that led to Egypt's change in power. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports. 

    Two years after the revolution that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, protesters still return to Cairo’s Tahrir Square — where it all began — to demonstrate against the Islamist President Mohamed Morsi and lament the country’s failing economy.

    Earlier this month, Bedouin gunmen kidnapped a British couple who were on their way to the glittering beaches of Sharm El Sheikh. They were quickly released, but Bedouins have taken other hostages and also attacked police stations and blocked access to towns to show their discontent with what they see as their poor treatment by Cairo.

    Last month, thugs attacked and entered the InterContinental hotel in Cairo, forcing it to close down while it implemented heightened security measures.

    And there has been also been unrest over death sentences handed out to 21 soccer fans over a deadly riot at a stadium last year.

    From terrorism to road accidents
    The World Economic Forum report, The Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index 2013, ranked Egypt overall in 85th place out of the 140 countries considered by the group, down 10 from last year. 

    The safety and security category looked at "the costliness of common crime and violence as well as terrorism." It also considered the reliability of the police and the number of road traffic accidents.

    Angry soccer fans took to the streets of Cairo Saturday, storming Egypt's soccer federation headquarters and setting it on fire. Two people were killed. NBC's Lester Holt reports.

    Egypt was in 140th and last place on this list behind Yemen at 139, Chad at 138, and Pakistan at 137. The U.S. State Department has current travel warnings for the latter three countries, but not Egypt.

    According to the Egypt’s state information service, tourism makes up 11.3 percent of Egypt’s gross domestic product.

    In 2010, before the revolution, Egypt welcomed an estimated 14.7 million tourists who brought $12.5 billion in revenue. Last year, it had 11 million tourists bringing $10.5 billion in revenue.

    Emile Asaad, manager of an American Express travel agency in the ancient city of Luxor, home to King Tut's tomb and the famous temples of Luxor and Karnak, said that “the important thing is that when people need to walk in the street they want to feel safe."

    "We have over 400 boats on the Nile, there is still 20 to 25 percent occupancy on some of the most popular boats, but others are just sitting and not operating," he said. "We don't know how the future looks."

    Adla Ragab, an economic advisor to the Egypt’s Tourism Minister Hisham Zaazou, said officials were taken aback by the WEF report.

    "When we first saw it, we were shocked. We held a lot of workshops to discuss this issue," she said by phone.

    Ragab said media reports had led people to believe that Egypt is more dangerous than it actually is. She added that during a trip to the U.S., hotel staff had insisted on escorting her to a nearby restaurant after dark, but that didn’t mean she would advise people not to go to the U.S.

    'It's a nice country'
    A selection of foreign tourists in Egypt appeared to support Ragab’s view.

    "I can say to anybody, go to Egypt! It's a nice country. There [are] so many things to see. It's very good weather, it's warm in the winter and there's no problem," Dirk Posner, of Leipzig, Germany, said while visiting the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

    Yuan Ye, from Shandong province, China, recommended that tourists use a trusted travel agency and explore the country with a group because of difficulties with facilities and services.

    "I think generally it is safe for tourists, but you should be careful, very careful from the peddlers who try to sell you something — force to sell you something," he said with a smile.

    Jaffar and Francoise Bentchikou, from Paris, France, also encouraged foreigners to visit.

    "We saw that the problems were limited to some places so we just try to avoid them," Jaffar said. "[Tourists] have to be conscious of the situation, but for the time being we have seen nothing against tourists especially."

    "We feel very bad about the revenue lost for tourism for the Egyptians," Francoise added.  "That is something that makes us very unhappy."

    But travel companies said many people were staying away.

    Bob Atkinson, a travel expert with the U.K.-based price-comparison website TravelSupermarket.com, said unrest in Egypt had "seriously affected the tourist trade."

    "The Arab uprisings very much put the Egypt market into a tailspin," he said.

    Flavia Jaber, owner of Toronto-based company Road to Travel, which includes Road to Egypt, said that "our business to Egypt is dead in the water at the moment."

    "People are not going to Egypt right now, at least not from North America," she said.

    "Definitely there are things going on in Egypt that are very unsavory and when you are considering going on a holiday, you want to go and relax, have a good time," she added. "You might say let’s not go to Egypt this year, let’s wait until things settle down."

    However, there was at least one thing in Egypt's favor in the WEF report — the price. The country was ranked the fourth cheapest tourist destination in the world "with competitive hotel prices, low fuel costs and low prices more generally." 

    Related:

    Egypt violence is rooted in the economy, not just politics

    Egypt could 'collapse,' army chief warns as violence continues

    Freed American: Egyptian kidnappers 'were very nice'

  • Why extreme Islamists are intent on destroying cultural artifacts

    Saeed Khan / AFP - Getty Images, file

    A member of the Taliban stands near the remnants of a Buddha statue in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, in March 2001. The militia blew up two ancient Buddhas after a decree from their supreme commander to destroy all of the country's statues.

    By Ian Johnston, Staff Writer, NBC News

    LONDON -- They have destroyed the iconic Buddhas of Bamiyan, smashed down the fabled “end of the world” gate in the ancient city of Timbuktu and even called for the destruction of Egypt’s ancient pyramids and the Sphinx.

    Extreme Islamist movements across the world have developed a reputation for the destruction of historic artifacts, monuments and buildings.

    This week, officials confirmed that up to 2,000 manuscripts at Mali's Ahmed Baba Institute had been destroyed or looted during a 10-month occupation of Timbuktu by Islamist fighters. Some experts have compared the texts to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

    To many in the West, such actions are simply wanton vandalism. However, experts say the thinking behind it is actually part of a wider tradition of rooting out idol-worship and superstition found in Christianity and Judaism as well as Islam.

    French and Malian troops have retaken control of Timbuktu from Islamist rebels. In the ancient city, much damage has been done, thousands of priceless manuscripts have been destroyed. Tim Ewart reports.

    Usama Hasan -- an Islamist for about 20 years, who now works to counter extremism at the U.K.’s Quilliam Foundation -- said most Muslims had “a kind of tolerant attitude" and a "live-and-let-live" approach toward such things.

    "Mainstream Muslim thinking tends to tolerate these historic artifacts," he said. "Even if they don’t agree with the superstitions, they don’t want to provoke the community and don’t see it as a big deal."

    But Hasan said he understood the mindset of those condemned as cultural vandals “very well” as he “used to subscribe to it.”

    He said that during his Islamist days he would say things like: “Yes, let’s destroy the pyramids when we take over Egypt.”

    "It’s very sad. You lose all that cultural heritage, music, history, art, ancient books. If they (Islamists) don’t agree with what’s in them … they seem to think it’s OK to burn these books," he said. "If you’re not Muslim or don’t subscribe to the same narrow interpretation the militants do, they will oppose everything you do and do so violently if they need to."

    Hasan said there were a number of stories explaining how the Sphinx lost its nose, but one account suggests that a religious figure in the 14th century, Saim El-Dahr, tried to get rid of it.

    “There was a common belief that the Sphinx had some power over the level of the River Nile … he wanted to smash the locals’ superstitious belief in the power of the Sphinx and tried to destroy it,” he said.

    Nov. 8: Until the fundamentalist Taliban government and its al-Qaida allies destroyed them in 2001, two immensely important Buddha statues were nestled in the Bamyan valley of Afghanistan. As NBC's Richard Engel reports, the region is slowly coming back to life as the restoration of the figures begins.

    Similar reasoning was likely behind some actions of Islamists in Mali. Breaking down the gate in Timbuktu was probably designed to show any local people who still believed in the fable that it was not actually true, Hasan said.

    But while the Taliban justified the 2001 demolition of the Buddhas of Bamiyan by saying they were idols, Hasan said there was more to it.

    “The Taliban’s destruction of the statues was a political gesture. The United Nations had sent money to restore these statues at the same time there were sanctions [against Afghanistan],” he said. “The Taliban said children were dying because of this … and the U.N. was more concerned about statues than people.”

    Noah Charney, professor of art history at the American University of Rome, said that the destruction of idols dated back to biblical times, when warring factions would destroy monuments of rivals that were thought to have religious power.

    NBC's Richard Engel travels to the legendary city of Timbuktu, which is cradled within one of West Africa's poorest nations.

    The Ten Commandments include a proscription against making “any graven image” of anything in heaven or on Earth, but Charney said this had been “quickly forgotten” or interpreted to mean only images of “false idols” by many Christians.

    The reason many Ancient Greek and Roman statues of gods are missing their heads and arms is not faulty construction, Charney said. Instead, it is often the legacy of the 6th-century Pope Gregory the Great.

    “He found the classical statuary to be very beautiful, but there was a danger people would revert back to their pagan ways” and start worshiping them, Charney said. By removing the head and arms, which often held items identifying the deity, the statue “lost all its power because you don’t know which god it is.”

    In seventh century Byzantium, clashes between Christians over the alleged worship of icons gave rise to the term “iconoclasm,” meaning the destruction of religious images.

    The Reformation in the 16th century also saw many statues in churches literally defaced by Protestants in Europe.

    Benoit Tessier / Reuters

    A museum guard displays a burned ancient manuscript at the Ahmed Baba Institute in Timbuktu, Mali, on Thursday.

    The city of Timbuktu has borne the brunt of recent Islamist iconoclasts, with rebel forces in Mali setting fire to its historic library as they retreated in the face of French and Malian government troops this month.

    After the militants took the city last year, they destroyed mausoleums and a gate that local superstition said would only open at the end of the world.

    In November, an ultraconservative religious figure in Egypt, Murgan Salem al-Gohary, told local television that the Sphinx and pyramids at Giza should be leveled, an idea that sparked headlines but is shared by only a tiny minority of Egyptians.

    “All Muslims are charged with applying the teachings of Islam to remove such idols, as we did in Afghanistan when we destroyed the Buddha statues,” he said.

    While he celebrated the destruction of the two 6th-century statues -- one 180 feet, the other 125 feet high -- in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley in March 2001, world cultural body UNESCO described it as a “tragic” act that “shook the world.” 

    Beyond the ugliness of the fighting between the U.S. and the Taliban sits Bamiyan Province, a national treasure in a nation divided by war. NBC's chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel tours the region and speaks with its people about their hopes and dreams.

    The wrecking ball has also been swung to significant effect in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.

    According to an estimate in 2005 by Sami Angawi, an expert on Islamic architecture, at least 300 historic buildings were demolished over the previous 50 years. 

    The reason, espoused by the Wahhabi movement within Islam, was that people might start idolatrously worshipping structures associated with Muhammad, rather than God.

    David Thomas, professor of Christianity and Islam at the U.K.’s Birmingham University, said iconoclasm was “a strain in all religions unfortunately,” but added that was “present at the moment in Islam more than anywhere else.”

    President Francois Hollande went on a sort of victory tour through Timbuktu, in Mali, recently held by extremists connected with al-Qaida. NBC's Rohit Kachroo reports from Mali.

    In contrast, he said that there were “teachings in the Quran that are actually very open and tolerant. There are teachings that accept other ways than the way given to Muhammad.”

    And Thomas said some Islamists were in danger of committing the very sin they despise.

    “The Taliban have an attitude that almost shades into idolatry itself. They are saying they know what the truth is, that they have a monopoly on the truth and that they can therefore almost take the place of God in judging who is right and who is wrong.”

    Related:

    Timbuktu: A journey to Africa's lost city of gold

    Dynamited Afghan Buddha statue may be saved

    Post-revolution, Egypt pyramids back in business

  • Egypt: A look inside the pharaoh's secret tunnels

    By NBC News

    The Great Pyramids of Giza are one of the most iconic images in the world, but 19 miles south of modern-day Cairo lies the Saqqara plateau, Egypt’s oldest pyramid complex.

    Follow NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel to Egypt, where he journeys through a network of underground tunnels beneath the Step Pyramid of Djoser.

  • Egyptian pyramids drawn into Islamist debate

    By msnbc.com news services

    CAIRO -- Around 1,000 Egyptians rallied near the ancient pyramids on Friday to protest against what they said were threats by Islamic radicals to undermine tourism, one of the country's biggest money earners, Reuters reports.

    Islamist groups look set to dominate the next parliament, with the once-banned Muslim Brotherhood seeing its party win 37 percent of the vote in a first phase of balloting and the much more puritanical Salafis securing a surprise 24 percent.

    Click here for the full story