Abid Qayyum Raja is a Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 lawyer and politician of Pakistani descent

Norwegians of Pakistani descent

Pakistani Norwegians are Norwegians of Pakistani descent. First generation Pakistani Norwegians, who migrate from Pakistan, are distinguished from the mainstream in several demographic aspects, while second generation Pakistani Norwegians, who are born in Norway, are well-established in Norway and...

.

He has since 2008 been office bearer {www.une.no} as Board Leader of Norwegian Immigration Appeals Board. Currently he is on leave and serving as Police Presecutor at National Police Immigration Service. Previously he has worked as a criminal defence lawyer for four years and been civil case litigator for two. He has appeared on many televised debates, and has written op-ed

Op-ed

An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...

s in national newspapers.
He has voiced opposition to prearranged marriages

Arranged marriage

An arranged marriage is a practice in which someone other than the couple getting married makes the selection of the persons to be wed, meanwhile curtailing or avoiding the process of courtship. Such marriages had deep roots in royal and aristocratic families around the world...

.. He has also written two books; Spokesman i 2008 (Aschehoug publishers house )and Dialogue in 2010 (CappelenDamm publishers).

As a child growing up in Norway he was subjected to corporal punishment

Corporal punishment

Corporal punishment is a form of physical punishment that involves the deliberate infliction of pain as retribution for an offence, or for the purpose of disciplining or reforming a wrongdoer, or to deter attitudes or behaviour deemed unacceptable...

 by his Pakistani parents and as a result contacted child protective services on his own, who took him into protective care for six months. He has been an ardent opponent of spanking and corporal punishment of children ever since.

Education

A graduate in Human Rights and Behavioural Sciences in Law at the University of Southampton

University of Southampton

The University of Southampton is a British public university located in the city of Southampton, England, a member of the Russell Group. The origins of the university can be dated back to the founding of the Hartley Institution in 1862 by Henry Robertson Hartley. In 1902, the Institution developed...

, Raja was in 2003 a Norway Scholar

Norway Scholarship

The Norway Scholarship is the only official scholarship to the University of Oxford that is awarded in Norway .The first Norway Scholarship was awarded in 1920. Since then, one Norway Scholar has been selected annually, except for a few periods, such as during the Second World War...

 at Wadham College at the University of Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

 where he studies for a MSc in Psychology. He holds also an undergraduate degree in Criminology and Cand.Jur.degree from University of Oslo with Laud.

Career in politics and with NGOs

He has been a spokesman for various muslim

Muslim

A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

 organizations in Norway.

Raja is a member of the Liberal Party of Norway, and unsuccessfully stood for a seat from Akershus

Akershus

- Geography :The county is conventionally divided into the traditional districts Follo and Romerike, which fill the vast part of the county, as well as the small exclave west of Oslo that consists of Asker and Bærum...

 county for the Norwegian Parliament in the 2009 national elections. He has been called to duty as member of the Norwegian National Essembly several times as a deputy member

Attendence at memorial service in 2001

After a memorial service for the victims of the World Trade Center attack in 2001 (at the American Church, Frogner, Oslo), he said it is "important that moderate muslims ... share the sorrow and distance ourselves from extremist violence and acts of terror"