The Last Word

Sami Moubayed 

With great interest I have been watching the TV series “King Farouk” this Ramadan, recounting the life of Farouk I, the last king of Egypt who was dethroned by a revolution carrying the signature of the Free Officers in 1952. For years we were taught to believe that Farouk was a ‘bad king’ whose ‘carelessness’ led to the Arab defeat in the War of 1948. Revolutions vilify and destroy all that preceded them. Egypt was no exception. Farouk’s name was ruined and so was that of the entire dynasty of Mohammad Ali Pasha, which like all other royal families, certainly had its faults. Even the Wafd Party, which was ultra-nationalistic, was ruined by the revolutionary Nasser regime. History books depicted Farouk as a womanizer, a drunkard, and a passive monarch who cared more for his personal indulgences than for the fate of Egypt and the Arab World. Historians, how-ever, know better. It was Farouk who initiated the Arab League in the 1940s. It was Farouk who worked to break the Hashemite-British dominance in the Arab World—with help of Saudi King Abdul-Aziz and Syrian President Shukri al-Quwatli. It was Farouk who insisted to go to war in Palestine in 1948. Farouk was a womanizer indeed—forgivable perhaps be-cause of his young age—but for example, he never drank alcohol. That is one of the many lies created by the Free Officers.