Abid Raja

His father Abdul Qayyum Raja (1937– ) was a factory worker who worked at the Christiania Spigerverk steel plant in Nydalen, while his mother Akthar Nasim (1949–2021) was a homemaker.

Raja describes his parents as someone who "used violence as a part of the parenting, violence was relatively common in my community".

Abid Qayyum Raja (born 5 November 1975) is a Norwegian lawyer and Liberal Party politician who served as Minister of Culture from 2020 to 2021.

In 1992, at age 15 he was taken away from home due to the ongoing violence in the household.

He was subsequently placed in a hospice for recovering drug-addicts, which he later would describe as a "hellish dump".

After being relocated to a nearby orphanage, he dropped out of high school.

After six months at the orphanage, he was allowed to move back home, after which his parents sent him to Pakistan.

Upon his return to Norway, he re-enrolled in high-school and according to him "had his mind set on becoming a lawyer" after seeing Kevin Costner in the film JFK.

After graduating from Foss Upper Secondary School, he enrolled at University of Southampton, and graduated with a degree in Human Rights and Behavioural Sciences in Law.

Raja was in 2003 the first non-ethnic Norwegian to receive the Norway Scholarship that have been rewarded since 1920 at University of Oxford, Wadham College and there he studied for the MSc degree in Psychology.

He holds also an undergraduate degree in Criminology and Master of Law degree Cand.jur. degree from University of Oslo cum laude.

He has worked as a criminal defence lawyer for four years and been civil case litigator for two.

During his years as criminal defense lawyer he was appointed by the court to be lead defence lawyer on several murder-cases, in and abroad of the country, and he also had the lead defense on several largest drug cases in Norwegian history.

While working as a lawyer, Raja also took advantage of the position a famous lawyer gets by advocating civil rights for all, defending poor peoples rights and helping ethnic minorities fight injustice.

In 2008, Raja was appointed by the Norwegian Government, King in Council, to be office bearer as Board Leader of Norwegian Immigration Appeals Board (official site), equivalent to a judge in a refugee court.

After this he also served as Police Prosecutor at the National Police Immigration Service, and was later posted as a diplomat at the Royal Norwegian Embassy in New Delhi, India.

A member of the Norwegian Liberal Party, he was at the end of 2012 nominated as the top candidate for Akershus Venstre in the 2013 Norwegian parliamentary election.

He is thus the first person in Norwegian politics with minority background to be nominated at top of a ballot-list for National parliament election.

He was elected to the Storting as representative for Akershus in 2013 where he served as second deputy chair of the Standing Committee on Transport and Communications and also is a member of the Standing Committee on Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs.

He was elected to the Storting in September 2013 for a four-year term.

In June 2016, he was re-nominated by the Akershus Liberal Party as their top-candidate for the general election that were held in September 2017.

In October 2017, Raja was elected as the vice-president of the Storting, the second time in Norway's history that a Muslim has been elected to that office.

Raja has written three books, the latter of which My fault (Min skyld) won the 2021 Norwegian Bookseller's Prize and was the most sold non-fiction book in Norway in 2021 and 2022.

Born in Oslo into a family of Pakistani descent, he was raised in the St. Hanshaugen neighborhood in Oslo.

Following the Progress Party's withdrawal from government in January 2020, Raja was appointed Minister of Culture and Sports, succeeding his party leader Trine Skei Grande, who had been appointed Minister of Education.

One of his first major cases as minister, was to deal with restrictions regarding the spread of COVID-19 in the country regarding sports.

Measures that were applied, were that football and other sports with audiences, should not have fully packed tribunes and that players should keep distance while playing.

By May, the government lifted restrictions and allowed children's football to be in close contact while playing, effective 15 June.

The month after, he expressed shock after learning that the NIF had lacked to make reports and work more effectively against racism.

He demanded that they'd make a report on racism.

The NIF expressed appreciation for Raja's initiative and that they will work constructively together to fight racism in sports.

In July, the government allowed for foreign film production to take place in Norway, with Raja himself approving that Tom Cruise and the crew of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One being allowed to shoot in Møre og Romsdal in August.

In mid-August, he announced his final decision to run for the Liberal Party leadership to succeed outgoing Trine Skei Grande, becoming the second Liberal politician to announce their intention to seek the leadership after Sveinung Rotevatn.

Raja was however open to becoming deputy leader if the party wished for it.

On 23 August, he was designated deputy leader of the party, with Rotevatn as first deputy and Melby as party leader, unanimously by the party's election committee.

At the party conference in September, he was elected second deputy leader, with Melby as leader and Rotevatn as first deputy, unopposed.

On 30 September, the government announced that contact training for broad sports would be allowed from 12 October, and at the same time would allow for a larger field of audiences to attend matches.

Raja also stated that every municipality should evaluate themselves whether or not it's safe to allow contact training.

The government took a u-turn after it had not included Sámi culture and museums in their COVID-19 budget support package.

Raja expressed in November that there was no doubt that the pandemic had affected the Sámi culture life equally.