There is a King Farouk mania going on these days in Egypt. Everyone is starting to talk about this monarch who was deposed over 50 years ago. Everyone is praising the series that turned out to be the most successful even though it was not aired on Egyptian TV (the authorities refused) but on the Saudi funded satellite entertainment channel MBC. Even my dad, to whom TV means sports and news, stays at home every night waiting for the King Faroul series. My dad was only 9 when the King make his final trip from Alexandria to Italy.
Just a couple of days ago, 4 of Egypt’s leading independent newspapers ran stories on the former king and printed large pictures of our royal family. The popular weekly El Destour published a huge picture of the king and his second wife Queen Nariman carrying the heir to the throne baby Prince Ahmed Fouad. Beside the picture, the paper wrote “a special issue on King Farouk for the future of Egypt.”
The talk even moved to Facebook. Groups dedicated to King Farouk and the royal family are popping up. One group called The House of Mohamed Ali attracted over 5000 members. And the number keeps growing everytime I log on there.
“If you are descending from Mohamed Ali Pasha royal family or any of the Pashas or Beys of Egypt, please notify one of the following admins (Mahmoud Shteiwey or Youssef Ahmed) with who you are to receive a virtual title “for the fun of it”! ;)”, say the group founders.
The most amazing thing about this group is that nearly all of the members are young Egyptians. Most of them were not even born when Sadat was around! What’s happening? I have two conclusions.
First, thanks to the splendid series, many Egyptians are starting to realize that tremendous injustice was in fact levied on the former monarch. Many are even starting to feel quilty that they have once believed the anti-Farouk tarnishing propaganda disseminated by the coup’s officers.
Second, there is kind of a yearning to Egypt “good ol’ days” when we were definitely a much better nation. People, especially the educated and those who are not tainted by a certain political philosophy, are starting to realise that despite the problems that existed during Farouk’s time, the coutry took a massive downward spiral after his departure; economically, politically, and socially.
I am persoanlly so glad that this is currently happening. It’s refreshing when well established lies get shattered. I’m also glad that Farouk still has living family members (son, daughter, and a very old sister) to witness justice being done to him.
People hate their king, when he’s in power and they admire him, when he’s gone.
Where do they love the king or queen most? There, where the monarch does not have any power.
Comment by Simon Columbus — October 13, 2007 @ 8:22 pm
Monarchs without power are a good thing. Every country needs a respected person at the top who can symbolize the loyalties of the whole population, and open new museums, and inspire the soldiers.
In India, for instance, they have an old and respected person who is elected as President. Power lies with the Prime Minister. In several European countries, they have inherited monarchies.
A monarch may advise and warn the Prime Minister, but can be over-ruled. He is there as a stabilizing factor if there is a political or constitutional crisis.
So Egypt could do worse than bring back its monarchy, as Spain did after Franco.
Comment by Don Cox — October 14, 2007 @ 9:55 am
That’s quite good ..
However, I think the series itself wasn’t that good ..
Comment by Ahmed — October 14, 2007 @ 1:36 pm
The series was magic, I loved it and thought the syrian actor did a great preformance, to be honest I was against King Farouk and after watching that series i really felt sorry for him and started reading the full history on the guy.
Comment by fadi — October 16, 2007 @ 10:59 am
King Farouk series was one of the best series show in TV so far and it is made based on true sources documented about the Late King Farouk and his families and was not from any corrupt or biase sources! Three generations and five more to go would pay for the corruption, mishandling and the stealing of Egyptian royal treasure and Egyptian money! To be back to the days of the Late King Farouk, Egypt need another 100 years of honest and hard work!
Comment by lulu — October 16, 2007 @ 9:14 pm
The fact that many people liked the series exposes the current political vacuum and the desperation for change. God bless Egypt.
Comment by Hossam — October 25, 2007 @ 7:52 am
“Our” royal dynasty was albanian and not Egyptian. ISn’t it great that we want to be ruled by foreigners than by our own people. Tragic.
Comment by ana — October 31, 2007 @ 4:53 pm
England was ruled by French speakers for centuries. Later, it was ruled by Germans. Egypt was once ruled, successfully, by Greeks. The infamous Habsburgs once infested titles and lands from Austria to Spain.
You ought to be concerned about who would be the better governor, not from whence they came. Everyone celebrates the end of colonialism, but many of those former colonies (specifically in Africa) have slipped into barbarism and rule by local warlords. Sure they escaped their foreign overlords, but it turned out that the new local overlords were worse.
Would you really value a corrupt local boy over a competent foreigner? Why? Your children might one day ask to know that.
Comment by Dawnfire82 — November 8, 2007 @ 7:39 pm
Confrontational tone not intended.
Comment by Dawnfire82 — November 8, 2007 @ 7:41 pm
Egypt during Farouk had a democracy and freedom that was faulty. An important feature of the concept of democracy is that it continually corrects itself. It is still doing so in Britain, the heart of recent democracy, several centuries after it started. It is very defective in the United States.
Farouk’s government corruption could have eventually corrected itself sooner or later. It also pails in comparison to the existing government corrupt traiters and embezzelers.
I am sorry to say that there no hope for Egypt for at least 100 years after the demise of this regime which furthermore is unlikely to die soon. God bless the poor Egyptians.
Comment by K. M. Osama — November 8, 2007 @ 8:19 pm
May God rest his soul, we really was tricked so much about the fake stories we heard about His Majesty. I was born after his death, but I really respect him and as an Egyptian really loves him. Sorry my King
Comment by Hisham — November 9, 2007 @ 8:10 am
Egypt was ruled by a king who was ruled by the British and the Egyptians had no saying in their own affairs & Nasser tried very hard to help the common Egyptians but he had to face some Arab leaders who were afraid to death
of his power on the whole Arab world and as a results,they supported the Brotherhood against him and the west started to fear him too and refused to help him build the high Dam to protect Egypt from the yearly flood.unfortunately,he had no choice but to nationalize all the foreigh establishments and that was a mistake because all the bright,rich people,Jews,Christians & Muslems fled the country and took the Egyptian econemy with them.The people are so sick that they don’t mind to be ruled by foreigners because the Egyptian rulers didn’t show any different.
Comment by Massimo — November 17, 2007 @ 7:40 pm
Great boysd31514470658b46c9efa4ec8d6557859
Comment by http://idisk.mac.com/fmp3musicdownloads/Public/index.html — December 11, 2007 @ 5:49 am
I would like to make two rather s points 1. his majesty king farouk may be of turkish descent but he is an egyptian so is king fuad and his grandfather kedevi Ismail.To say that farouk is turkish would be calling Mohamad Ali an African not an american or thet the American senartor Robert Juliami is Italian, or Sadat is sudanese not an egyptian so that argument that his majesty king farouk is turkish falls flat on it’s face even Moubarak may have foriegn ancestries (like hell I do turkish and Greek being among them) alot of Egyptians do, given it’s position and Importance to the world until the late 1880’s.
2. his majesty king farouk also did the best with what he had. You cannot have a clean democracy if the British colonials were killing any one who won the elections that they did not like and the fact that they had a big army within close proximity did not work on farouk’s side . In the thirties and fourties racism and Imperialism were the norm. It was hard for the international community to understand a nation like Eygpt or a person like farouk who wanted to set his people free. However when America became a super power they had there own aversions towards Imperialism given there own horrible Experience with it which made Abdel nasser’s battle with the British a whole lot Easier
Comment by ahmad — January 22, 2008 @ 7:19 am
what`s really weired is that during the monarchy, the king had much lesser power than the presidents who came behind him due to the revolution. bottom line is that Egypt used to have somekind of democracy and non-centralized powers including the king, prime minisiter, parliament and the british. after the “revolution” the power became centralized to the president, with absolute powers!!how can we call this a revolution!!!It seems that Egypt is the only country that had a revolution to remove democracy and instal dectatorship!!
Comment by drpipi — February 22, 2008 @ 11:21 pm