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Prince Moulay Hicham of Morocco

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Moulay Hicham ben Abdallah Alaoui
Prince of Morocco
Prince Moulay Hicham pictured before a court in Casablanca
Born (1964-03-04) 4 March 1964 (age 60)
Rabat, Morocco
SpouseMalika Benabdelali
IssueSharifa Lalla Faizah Alaoui
Sharifa Lalla Haajar Alaoui
Names
Hicham ben Abdallah Alaoui
DynastyAlaouite
FatherPrince Moulay Abdallah
MotherLalla Lamia Solh
ReligionSunni Islam

Prince Moulay Hicham of Morocco (Template:Lang-ar, born 4 March 1964) is the first cousin of the current King Mohammed VI and Prince Moulay Rachid. He is the son of Prince Moulay Abdallah of Morocco, the late brother of former King Hassan II, and Princess Lalla Lamia Solh, daughter of Riad Al Solh, the first Prime minister of Lebanon. He is also the cousin of Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, whose mother Mona Al Solh is another daughter of the Lebanese family. Under the Moroccan constitution, Moulay Hicham stands third in the line of succession to the Alaouite throne.[1]

In his youth, Prince Moulay Hicham garnered the nickname "Red Prince" because of his leftist political positions. More recently, he has become an outspoken advocate for greater democracy in Morocco[2][3] and the broader Middle East.[4][5] He regularly speaks on these issues at public forums around the world, among them la Universidad de Málaga,[6] HEC-Paris (École des hautes études commerciales de Paris),[7] the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,[8] and Harvard University.[9] He has also published numerous essays on political reform and democracy in English, French, and Arabic language journals and newspapers.[10][11][12] He is currently a consulting professor at the Center for Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law at Stanford University.[13][14]

Activities

  • Founder and President of the Moulay Hicham Foundation, a non-profit private foundation that has supported social science research on the Arab world at leading universities.[15]
  • Co-founder, along with John Waterbury and Abdellah Hammoudi, of the Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia (TRI) at Princeton University.[16]
  • Managing director of Al-Tayyar, a renewable energy firm, based in Abu Dhabi.[17]
  • Member of the Advisory Board of Human Rights Watch for the Middle East and North Africa region.[18]
  • Producer of the 2012 award-winning documentary on democratization and dictatorship, A Whisper to a Roar, in collaboration with director Ben Moses.[19]

Personal Life

As a member of the Moroccan royal family, Prince Moulay Hicham was raised in the palace quarter of Rabat alongside his brother and cousins, including the current King Mohammed VI. He attended the Rabat American School and graduated from Princeton University in 1985.[20] He later attended Stanford University for graduate study in political science. In 2002, Prince Moulay Hicham relocated to Princeton, New Jersey with his family.[21] He is married since 1995 to Princess Lalla Malika Benabdelali, a cousin of the Moroccan businessman and current minister of Agriculture Aziz Akhannouch. He has two daughters: Sharifa Lalla Faizah Alaoui (born 1996) who currently attends Yale University, and Sharifa Lalla Haajar Alaoui (born 1999). Many of these events are outlined in his memoirs, Journal d'un Prince Banni,[22] published in April 2014 to considerable controversy.[23][24]

References

Royal titles
Preceded by Line of succession to the Moroccan Throne Next:
Prince Moulay Ismail of Morocco
as Prince Moulay Ismail

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