| Walid al-Kubaisi | |
| Birth Date: | 9 February 1958 |
| Nationality: | Norwegian |
| Awards: | Fritt Ord Honorary Award Skjervheim Award |
| Notable Works: | Freedom, Equality and the Muslim Brotherhood |
Walid al-Kubaisi (9 February 1958 – 31 July 2018) was a Norwegian-Iraqi author, writer, journalist, translator and government scholar. He notably criticised the alleged influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe in the documentary film Freedom, Equality and the Muslim Brotherhood in 2010.
Al-Kubaisi was born in Baghdad, Iraq, and received a bachelor's degree in electronic engineering at the University of Baghdad. He fled Iraq as a political refugee in 1981 owing to war,[1] first to Syria and Lebanon, before he arrived in Norway in 1986[2] and gained Norwegian citizenship.[3] He regarded himself as an "apostate" shortly after his arrival in Norway, an "atheist" in 2008, but a "secular Muslim" in 2010, and was from 2016 a board member of Ex-Muslims of Norway.[4]
In addition to writing books himself, he translated selected Norwegian literature by Erling Kittelsen, Håvard Rem, Jan Olav Brynjulfsen, Kirsti Blom, Camilla Juel Eide, Arnljot Eggen, Ingvar Ambjørnsen, Kjell Askildsen and Dag Solstad to Arabic.[5] He also translated Arabic poetry to Norwegian, including poems by Muhammad al-Maghut,[6] Muniam Alfaker,[7] Faisal Hashmi,[8] and Eftikhar Ismaeil.[9]
He was nominated to the Brage Prize for his book Min tro, din myte. Islam møter norsk hverdag in 1996, and won the Skjervheim Award in 2003 for his "fearless" cultural work.[10] He was appointed a government scholar in 2007, and received the Fritt Ord Honorary Award in 2016 for his "insightful contributions to the Norwegian public for two decades".[11]
He worked as a journalist for the weekly newspaper Dag og Tid for the last fifteen years of his life. Like the written form used by the newspaper, he was very fond of the written standard Nynorsk.[2]
He wrote the script for the 2010 documentary film Freedom, Equality and the Muslim Brotherhood, which was directed by Per Christian Magnus.[12]
Al-Kubaisi died in 2018 of cancer.[2]
Al-Kubaisi for a long time warned against political Islam in Europe.[13] He argued that the hijab was a political uniform for the militant Islamist movement, and maintained, that if Islamists were to be successful in making the hijab synonymous with Islam, they would have achieved a victory in the West which they had not been able to accomplish in Muslim countries. He also claimed that the hijab was only created in the 1980s after Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution, and that it, unlike national Islamic dresses such as the burqa, is a dress exclusively created for the universal political Islamist movement.[14]
He claimed that Tariq Ramadan was an Islamist, who "spoke with two tongues": smoothly and articulate in the West, yet purely Islamist in the Muslim community and the suburbs. He held that Ramadan sought to Islamise the West, but in a more patient manner than the likes of Osama bin Laden.[15]
He believed that the Muslim Brotherhood was the "mother organization" for the world's Islamist political ideology. He said that the Muslim Brotherhood has a plan to conquer Europe by the hijab, high birth rates and democracy; Islamists were exploiting Western democracy to reach their own anti-democratic goals.[14] His 2010 documentary Freedom, Equality and the Muslim Brotherhood discussed this, in which he also interviewed several Arab intellectuals who espoused his views.[16] He also claimed that notable Norwegian Muslims such as Mohammad Usman Rana, Lena Larsen and Basim Ghozlan represented the ideology of the Brotherhood in Norway, and that Abid Raja of the Norwegian Liberal Party was a "running boy" for Islamists.[17]
He has been described by social anthropologist Sindre Bangstad and Mohammad Usman Rana as a "propagator of Eurabia-views", and that his documentary echoed "Eurabia-literature".[18] [19] His documentary also proved very popular on counter-jihad websites.[20] In February 2011, al-Kubaisi participated in a meeting hosted by Stop Islamisation of Norway where he held a speech,[21] after having established contacts with the organisation since 2004.[22]