Monarchs and Presidents in Islam

In the Islamic world’s relations with Israel, the hard-liners are the various Arab and non-Arab republics. When there is any sign of softness, it comes, almost always, from one of the monarchies. (Egypt, and Egypt alone, is the exception.) It thus did not come as a great surprise that King Hassan II of Morocco agreed to meet with the then Israeli prime minister, Shimon Peres, this summer.

While individual monarchs historically may have been capricious or cruel, monarchy as an institution is inclined to be generous: Montesquieu has told us that while the driving element in republics is virtue, in monarchies it is clemency. And, indeed, the Islamic monarchs of old were infinitely more tolerant than their modern republican successors. They traveled extensively, and many had a cosmopolitan outlook. Some had relatives abroad. When King Hassan II of Morocco writes to members of Europe’s royal families, he addresses them as “cher cousin” or “chére cousine,” since he is a descendant of Mohammed’s daughter Fatima, as by now are all the Christian royal families. (Many centuries ago, a Moroccan prince was taken prisoner by the Castilians and converted in captivity. After his release he married into a princely family, and over the centuries his bloodline has spread into countless aristocratic and royal families.) In choosing their administrators, officers, diplomats, bankers, and doctors, Islam’s monarchs looked for able men regardless of religion, never caring whether their choices were popular or not.

EK

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Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

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In the Islamic world’s relations with Israel, the hard-liners are the various Arab and non-Arab republics. When there is any sign of softness, it comes, almost always, from one of the monarchies. (Egypt, and Egypt alone, is the exception.) It thus did not come as a great surprise that King Hassan II of Morocco agreed to meet with the then Israeli prime minister, Shimon Peres, this summer.

While individual monarchs historically may have been capricious or cruel, monarchy as an institution is inclined to be generous: Montesquieu has told us that while the driving element in republics is virtue, in monarchies it is clemency. And, indeed, the Islamic monarchs of old were infinitely more tolerant than their modern republican successors. They traveled extensively, and many had a cosmopolitan outlook. Some had relatives abroad. When King Hassan II of Morocco writes to members of Europe’s royal families, he addresses them as “cher cousin” or “chére cousine,” since he is a descendant of Mohammed’s daughter Fatima, as by now are all the Christian royal families. (Many centuries ago, a Moroccan prince was taken prisoner by the Castilians and converted in captivity. After his release he married into a princely family, and over the centuries his bloodline has spread into countless aristocratic and royal families.) In choosing their administrators, officers, diplomats, bankers, and doctors, Islam’s monarchs looked for able men regardless of religion, never caring whether their choices were popular or not.