Egyptians turn towards the Monarchy to show their opposition of the oppressive republic

Criticising Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is a dangerous venture in the Nile country. "His method of governance is one that sucks the life out of the democratic and pluralistic aspirations that millions of Egyptians embraced after President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation in 2011. ... Sisi has returned the country to a state comparable to the strongman days of President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Nasser set the precedent for military rule and severe controls on the flow of information and knowledge, arguably the two greatest constraints on human and national development in the Arab world since 1952." (Aljazeera America).

 It seems safer to refer to the pre-1952 period as the "the beautiful era". The years of King Farouk I mean glamour, class, religious tolerance and a civilised society. That's the quintessence of an article on the BBC Trending website: Why are some Egyptians pinning away for their long-gone king?

"I'm begging King Farouk not to leave Egypt to the army," an Egyptian tweeted recently - quite an odd plea, as Egypt hasn't had a monarch for more than 60 years. But that message, and thousands like it, were shared in a sort of mass historical role play that pushed the phrase "Tweet as if you're in the 1950s" to the top of Egypt's Twitter charts.

 A Facebook fan page in his name that was set up in August 2011 has been liked more than 2.2 million times. "King Farouk was wrongly and unfairly depicted," says Amr Abu Seif, a 40-year-old Egyptian who set up the Facebook page as well as a King Farouk website, which he started in 2007 after he couldn't find any websites dedicated to the Egyptian monarchy.

Queen Narriman and King Farouk I with his son Fouad II on his lap.

Of course, there is an Egyptian king: Fouad II, son and heir of King Farouk who became king in 1952, after his father was forced to go into exile. However, the baby-king was deposed by Nasser in 1953. However, he keeps in touch with the Egyptian people and send a royal message on the occassion of Eid, the end of Ramadan. (For a rough translation you can use https://translate.google.com/)

﴿وَلِتُكْمِلُوا الْعِدَّةَ وَلِتُكَبِّرُوا اللهََّ عَلَى مَا هَدَاكُمْ وَلَعَلَّكُمْ تَشْكُرُونَ﴾

يتوجه فؤاد الثاني -ملك مصر السابق- وأسرته بأصدق التهاني للشعب المصري، وللشعوب العربية والإسلامية، بمناسبة حلول عيد

الفطر المبارك؛ الذي نستقبله الليلة شاكرين بعد أن منَّ اللهُ علينا وعلى أمَّتنا بإتمامِ شهرَ رمضان المعظَّم، فرحين بما آتانا الله من

نعمهِ ورحمتهِ في أهلينا ووطننا.
ويرفع فؤاد الثاني الدعاء من قلب مؤمن بالله ومحب لرسوله أن يتقبل الله صيامنا ودعاءنا، وأن يتغمدنا بعنايته ورحمته، وأن يؤلف

بين قلوبنا ويحفظ وطننا مصر من كل سوء ومكر، سبحانه نعم المولى ونعم النصير. وأن هذه المناسبة الكريمة، نستحضر فيها، بكل

تدبر واعتبار، ما يجمع شعوب أمتنا العربية والإسلامية من روابط وتاريخ، ترسخ إيماننا بوحدة مصيرها، في ظل إعلاء قيم ديننا
الحنيف، الداعية إلى الإخاء والإيثار والمحبة، والوسطية والاعتدال، والتسامح والتعايش بين مختلف الديانات والحضارات.
حفظ الله مصر وشعبها

فؤاﺍدﺩ فارﺭوﻭقﻕ

Monarchist candidate in Egyptian presidential election

Hossam Shaltot, a retired aviation engineer, is running in the Egptian presidential election on 23rd/24th May. But he has no intention of becoming Egypt's next president. His aim to give the country its Monarchy back.

"I came to announce my bid for president because there are so many problems that need to be solved and I'm the only one who can solve them," he told Turkish Anadolu Agency. "Conditions in the country are going from bad to worse," he added: "Something has to be done." He calls both toppled president Mohamed Morsi and his toppler, army chief Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, who also running for president, "failures".

Shaltot said: "Al-Sisi has been Egypt's de facto ruler for the past eight months, but he's done nothing to solve the country's problems."

If elected, Hossam Shaltot plans to restore Egypt's monarchy, which, he suggested, would allow it to join the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a six-country grouping of oil-rich Gulf Monarchies plus The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the Kingdom of Morocco. This would mean Egyptian workers would have the chance to find work in the Gulf without requiring a visa.

Shaltot said the restoration of the monarchy and GCC membership would solve Egypt's acute fuel shortage by stimulating fuel aid from the Gulf.

Egypt's legitimate Monarch, King Fu'ad II, was toppled in 1953 and has been living in Europe since a military coup d'état established a dictatorship that lasted until the "Arab Spring" forced Hosni Mubarak out of power. King Fu'ad had succeeded his father on 26th July 1952 upon the abdication of His Majesty King Fārūq I, who was forced by the putsch of army officers to leave the country. His Majesty, King Fu'ad II reigned for less than a year until 18th June 1953.

Egyptian wedding in Istanbul on 30th August 2013, King Fuad II embraces his son, Crown Prince Muhammed Ali, who married Princess Noal Zaher of Afghanistan in a lavish ceremony.

In July 2013 Al Jazeera author Tanya Goudsouzian speculated about The Return of the King:

In Egyptian author Alaa Al Aswany's bestselling 2002 novel The Yacoubian Building, an ageing aristocrat declares:

"It was a different age. Cairo was like Europe. It was clean and smart and the people were well mannered and respectable and everyone knew his place exactly…"

Fewer and fewer people remember Egypt as it once was, a glittering romantic metropolis and a genuine regional hub for culture and the arts - it is an Egypt that now only lives in the collective memory of some exiles, the result of dictatorships both republican and Islamic.

Prince Osman Rifaat Ibrahim was barely two years old when his family was forced to leave his native Egypt, after the 1952 Free Officers' revolution. As members of the dynasty of Mohamed Ali, founder of modern Egypt, they had become persona non grata. His father, Prince Amr Ibrahim, was blacklisted as a potential threat to the new order. He had been a high commander of the Special Police during World War II, and enjoyed a great deal of support among certain circles. As a grandson of Mohamed Ali's eldest son, he was viewed as a contender for the throne.

Overnight, their family lost everything, as the state confiscated extensive properties and all of their personal belongings, including priceless antiques and artworks, by order of the Revolutionary Command Council. There were three palatial homes in Cairo, three buildings in coastal Alexandria, and vast swaths of agricultural land on which they grew cotton, then a highly profitable crop. With nothing left in Egypt, they went into exile, first to Italy and later to Switzerland, where Prince Osman grew up among other Egyptian aristocrats.

Today, like the rest of the world, the 63-year-old prince watches from afar as chaos unfolds in Egypt, wondering whether there will ever be a happy ending to the story that began six decades ago.

"When this latest revolution started a little over two years ago, I was hopeful that it might be the end of nearly 60 years of military dictatorship," he told Al Jazeera. "Unfortunately it was not, and where we are headed is gloomy."

Unless the Monarchy is to return in all its glory.