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. ^[1]

Personal life and career

Al-Kubaisi was born in Baghdad, Iraq, and received a bachelor's degree in electronic engineering at the University of Baghdad. ^[2] He fled Iraq as a political refugee in 1981 owing to war, ^[3] first to Syria and Lebanon, before he arrived in Norway in 1986 ^[4] and gained Norwegian citizenship. ^[5] He regarded himself as an " apostate" shortly after his arrival in Norway, ^[2] an "atheist" in 2008, ^[2] but a "secular Muslim" in 2010, ^[6] and was from 2016 a board member of Ex-Muslims of Norway. ^[7]

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. ^[8] He also translated Arabic poetry to Norwegian: poems by Faisal Hashmi in 2008 and by Eftikhar Ismaeil in 2010. ^{[9] [10]}

He was nominated to the Brage Prize in 1996, ^[8] and won the Skjervheim Award in 2003. ^[1] He was appointed a government scholar in 2006, ^[1] and received the Fritt Ord Honorary Award in 2016. ^[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. ^[4]

He wrote the script for the 2010 documentary film Freedom, Equality and the Muslim Brotherhood, which was directed by Per Christian Magnus. ^[1]

Al-Kubaisi died in 2018 of cancer. ^[4]

Views on political Islam

Al-Kubaisi argued that the hijab was a political uniform for the militant Islamist movement. He 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 Iranian revolution, and that it, unlike national Islamic dresses such as the burqa, is a dress exclusively created for the universal political Islamist movement. ^[12]

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. ^[6]

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. ^[12] His 2010 documentary Freedom, Equality and the Muslim Brotherhood discussed this, in which he also interviewed several Arab intellectuals who espoused his views. ^[13] 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. ^[14]

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". ^{[15] [16]} His documentary also proved very popular on counter-jihad websites. ^[2] In February 2011, al-Kubaisi participated in a meeting hosted by Stop Islamisation of Norway where he held a speech, ^[17] after having established contacts with the organisation since 2004. ^[18]

Works

Bibliography

• Allahs lille brune: Koranen og profetens ord i utvalg [Allah's little brown book: the Quran and the prophet's words in selection]. Religionskritisk forlag. 2004 [1989]. ISBN  9788272650154. (with Ronnie Johanson)
• Min tro, din myte: islam møter norsk hverdag [My faith, your myth: Islam meets Norwegian everyday]. Aventura. 1996. ISBN  9788258812125.
• Sindbads verden [Sindbad's world]. Pantagruel. 1997. ISBN  9788279000006.
• Halvmånens hemmeligheter [The secrets of the crescent]. Pantagruel. 1998. ISBN  9788279000150.
• Norske poteter og postmodernistiske negre: kulturelle kollisjoner og misforståelser [Norwegian potatoes and post-modernistic negroes: cultural collisions and misunderstandings]. Kulturbro. 2000. ISBN  9788291234274.
• Rasisme forklart for barn: en bok for barn i alle aldre, og med alle hudfarger [Racism explained for children: a book for children of all ages, and with all skin colours]. Pantagruel. 2001. ISBN  9788279001270.
• Blekk og blod: ei familiekrønike fra Midtausten og Noreg [Ink and blood: a family chronicle from the Middle East and Norway]. Dreyer. 2016. ISBN  9788282651783.
• Hvordan forklarer du rasisme for barna dine?: en bok som burde vært helt unødvendig [How do you explain racism for your children?: a book that should be completely unnecessary]. Pantagruel. 2021. ISBN  9788234400872.

Documentary film

• Freedom, Equality and the Muslim Brotherhood (2010), screenplay, narrator

References