Abid Raja

In 2010, Raja was awarded the Fritt Ord Award for freedom of speech. On 15 November 2017 he was named the 2018 recipient of the International Religious Liberty Association's International Award for Outstanding Leadership in Religious Freedom Advocacy.

He has voiced opposition to forced marriages as well as marriages based on the caste system within the south-Asian community in Norway. Also an outspoken opponent of arranged marriages, of which he said in 2013; "it is essential to break up the marriage pattern in the Norwegian-Pakistani community, so that arranged marriages becomes uncommon".

A member of the Liberal Party of Norway, 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 National Assembly in September 2013 for four years term. He was in June 2016 re-nominated by Akershus Venstre as their top-candidate for the general election that were held in September 2017.

In the years 2009-2011 he organized a series of dialogue meetings at the House of Literature, with controversial topics, such as why there is hate among Muslims, Jews and homosexuals. In these debates the leaders of Norway from all position participated; ranging from at that time Norwegian Secretary of State Jonas Gahr Støre, the chief of PST, chief editors of largest Medias, even the Norwegian Royal Crown Prince. For this effort Raja was also rewarded the highest Freedom of Speech award.

In 2008 Raja was appointed by the Norwegian Government, King in Council, to be office bearer as Board Leader of Norwegian Immigration Appeals Board, equivalent to a judge in a refugee court. After this he also served as Police Prosecutor at National Police Immigration Service, and later was posted as Norwegian diplomat at Royal Norwegian Embassy in New Delhi, India.

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 Scholar 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.

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".

Abid Qayyum Raja (born 5 November 1975) is a Norwegian lawyer and Liberal Party politician who has served as Minister of Culture since 2020. He was elected to the Parliament of Norway as representative for Akershus in 2013 where he serves 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. In October 2017, Raja was elected as the vice-president of the Parliament of Norway, the second time in Norway's history that a Muslim has been elected to that office.

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