Walid al-Kubaisi (9 February 1958 – 31 July 2018) was a Norwegian-Iraqi author, writer, journalist, translator, social commentator and government scholar.
[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 had by then been imprisoned in Syria, and been attempted to be recruited for a suicide attack as a soldier in the Palestinian resistance,[6] while working as a journalist for newspapers controlled by the PLO.
[11][12][13] 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".
[15] 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.
[16] He also translated Arabic poetry to Norwegian, including poems by Muhammad al-Maghut,[17] Muniam Alfaker,[18] Faisal Hashmi,[19] and Eftikhar Ismaeil.
[2] In February 2011, al-Kubaisi participated in a meeting hosted by Stop Islamisation of Norway where he held a speech,[34] after having established contacts with the organisation since 2004.