The imam from Islam Net, who is employed as a researcher at the MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society (Menighetsfakultetet), has never been an imam at Islam Net, he claims in several media outlets. But Islam Net called him an imam and enthusiastically arranged an Islamic celebration when Zeshan Ullah Qureshi was back after ten years in Saudi Arabia, in March 2023. In May 2024, Qureshi himself posted a poster stating that he, as an imam, was visiting a mosque in Sarpsborg. The controversial Islam Net even had Zeshan in its own profile picture until a week ago.
There have been countless newspaper articles about Zeshan Ullah Qureshi after Document on 7 March revealed that an imam from Islam Net is employed as a researcher at the former Menighetsfakultetet, now called MF vitenskapelig høyskole. Document and Dagen followed up with some critical articles, and one might have expected loud criticism that what for more than a hundred years has been Norway’s conservative clergy school has employed an imam with a background from one of the most radical Islamic milieus in Norway. The opposite happened. Zeshan Ullah Qureshi and his employment at MF must be said to have been positively embraced outright by academia and related bodies.
Det tidligere Menighetsfakultetet har ansatt imam fra Islam Net
Never been an imam at Islam Net?
“When I returned from Medina, I was still active for a short period in Islam Net, while I was applying for admission as a doctoral fellow. I was never employed as an imam — this is an incorrect portrayal,” Zeshan Ullah Qureshi told the research magazine Khrono under the headline “I am a researcher, not an imam” a couple of weeks after the revelations that he was employed at the former Menighetsfakultetet. He repeated the message to Vårt Land about a week later. There, Zeshan Ullah Qureshi said “that he is no longer active in Islam Net, and has never been employed there as an imam.”
Whether he was employed there in a particular pay grade is fairly irrelevant. What is of interest is whether he has functioned in the role of imam, and whether he has been closely affiliated with Islam Net, that is to say a milieu that was described as “extreme” by the entire political spectrum when it became known that Islam Net in 2021 had purchased Oslo skytesenter for more than NOK 60 million.
Wanted to stop Islam Net’s radicalisation centre
At that time, in 2021, the Rødt politician Eivor Evenrud stated: “I expect that a majority of the politicians in Oslo will take steps to stop the establishment of such a place”, and the MDG politician Arild Hermstad said: “We are now looking at what measures we as a municipality can take to stop this.” The Labour Party leading figures Kamzy Gunaratnam, Mansoor Hussain, Abdullah Alsabeehg, and Raymond Johansen were also strongly critical. They tore into Islam Net over the plans to buy the shooting centre for NOK 60 million, and told Avisa Oslo that “young people in Groruddalen do not need such a radicalisation machine”.
The opposition was only theoretical, for the former shooting range of the Oslo police has today been embellished with yet more millions and turned into a mosque and recruitment centre for Islam, with further plans for investment and expansion. In spite of Islam Net’s extensive cooperation with what many call hate preachers, and despite what many have perceived as support for the stoning of adulterous women and homosexuals. The latter emerged in a video from Islam Net’s “Peace Conference” in 2013.
It is thus this milieu with which Zeshan Ullah Qureshi was affiliated before he was employed at what for more than a hundred years was Norway’s conservative clergy school, Det teologiske menighetsfakultetet from 1907. In addition to the fact that Qureshi has nine years of Islamic studies behind him in Medina in Saudi Arabia, a place of learning known in every respect for promoting the opposite of human rights, democracy, Christian and Western values.
Zeshan Ullah Qureshi, researcher at Menighetsfakultetet, claims in several media outlets that he is not an imam from Islam Net, but several examples show the opposite. Such as when his brother Fahad Qureshi welcomed him back as Islam Net’s own imam, in March 2023, and such as when Zeshan himself shared a poster of himself as an imam, in May 2024, well over three months before he started in the doctoral fellowship position at MF. Photo: Facebook.
Advertised that Zeshan was an imam
“Shaykh Abo Salih Zeshan, imam at Iman Aktivitetssenter and Islam Net, has — ma sha Allah — recently come back after 10 years in Medina”, wrote his brother Fahad Qureshi on Facebook on 29 March 2023, and shared a poster with a picture of Zeshan and an invitation to free iftar with pizza, on the occasion of his brother’s return to Islam Net.
Zeshan has himself shared publicity for his activities as an imam. For example, the poster he posted on his own Facebook page on 13 May 2024, with the following comment: “On Sunday I am, in sha Allah, in Sarpsborg together with Sh. Yahya Al-Raabi”, he wrote, referring to a themed evening at the mosque Al-Rawdan Kultur Senter in Sarpsborg, where the two imams were to appear together. Beneath the picture of himself it says: “Abu Salih Zeshan, imam at Iman Senter”. The latter is the name of the centre run by Islam Net in Groruddalen in Oslo.
Advised Muslims against saying “Merry Christmas”
Abo Salih Zeshan is another name that Zeshan Ullah Qureshi uses about himself, and he has his own versions on social media for that version of himself. Presumably in order to highlight himself as a religious leader within Islam. We occasionally use the short form “Zeshan”, as Qureshi is more readily confused with his brother Fahad, who until now has been the more widely known of the two, as leader of Islam Net.
In his role as an Islamic guide under the auspices of Islam Net, Zeshan Ullah Qureshi has, inter alia, advised Muslims against saying “Merry Christmas”, which one would not think was especially qualifying for employment with Menighetsfakultetet, a university college which still has a Christian foundation of values expressed in its statutes: “MF’s foundation of values is the Christian faith as expressed in the Bible and the Evangelical-Lutheran confession of the Church of Norway”, it already states in § 1.
The growth of Islam a threat to Christian cultural heritage
The newspaper Dagen criticised in several reports the fact that MF has employed an imam from Islam Net. Editor Vebjørn Selbekk was fairly clear in a commentary article:
“When we believed that the decay (at MF) could scarcely become any greater, it has nevertheless accelerated further in recent years. And it has to do with the religion of Islam. We hold that the growth of Muslim ideology represents a threat to the Norwegian, Christian cultural heritage and to Norway as a Christian nation. But at MF they evidently see it quite differently. What was once one of the strongest Norwegian institutions for conveying the Christian faith has in recent years stood for an academic embrace of Islamic theology. Thus the institution that was built to guard Norway’s Christian foundation has mutated into one of the country’s foremost academic door-openers for the Muslim religion”, wrote Selbekk, and showed little understanding that MF is now employing Muslims to conduct research on the Qur’an, the book that curses anyone who believes that God has a son.
Qureshi receives support in Vårt Land and academia
Religion editor Elise Kruse is among those who are strongly critical of Dagen’s coverage generally and Selbekk’s commentary in particular. A diffuse suspicion-mongering and a journalism that creates enemies, writes Kruse, who praises MF for treating Islam with interest and opening the gate for that religion. Even though MF is still a clergy school with a Christian foundation of values.
The problem is not Qureshi, but that there are too few Muslims in the religiously anchored part of academia, wrote Gyrid K. Gunnes, likewise in Vårt Land. Gunnes is the priest who once prayed to Allah as an art performance, and who is now associate professor at another Christian university college, namely VID vitenskapelig høyskole.
Other doctoral fellows at MF have rallied around Zeshan Ullah Qureshi in at least a couple of newspaper opinion pieces. 17 of them wrote that the criticism of MF’s development and the employment of Qureshi “forms part of a well-known Islamophobic discourse and reflects the conspiracy notion of Muslim ‘takeover’.” Under the headline “Anti-Muslim messages are not legitimate institutional criticism”, they claimed that Selbekk was engaging in racism and Islamophobia in his commentary article, and that Dagen contributed to “normalising a broader racist discourse directed at Muslims and other minorities in Norway. MF is a specialised university college conducting research and teaching in theology, religious studies, and social sciences, including studies of Islamophobia and racism”.
We do not know what other doctoral fellows at MF thought about the matter, but Zeshan Ullah Qureshi was in any case very enthusiastic about the support. He shared the piece on Facebook and wrote:
“I simply have no words for how grateful I am to be part of the fantastic doctoral fellowship environment at MF. 17 of my dear PhD colleagues have stood up and clearly confronted Vebjørn Selbekk’s racist and discriminatory rhetoric. Thanks to Christine Lillethun Norheim, Kjersti Anne Glover Litleskare, and all the rest of you!”
Qureshi has in general received much support after he was exposed as a former Islam Net imam. He himself has had countless pieces about his own activities and commentary articles printed in research magazines such as Khrono, Forskersonen, Forskning etc. And others have written opinion pieces and reports that essentially support the imam from the milieu that until quite recently was described as “extreme” and “radicalising”. I would estimate that at least 15–18 such pieces have appeared thus far, over the past few weeks since the revelations.
Does not recognise our God
There appears to be very little interest, with a few exceptions, in the imam’s more Islamist activities. Which one must call all activity involving the spread of Islam in general, since it is a religion or ideology that does not recognise any other religion. Or as it is said there: “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.”
Or as Zeshan Ullah Qureshi puts it in a video for Islam Net on 18 November 2019: “Our religion shall surpass all other religions, even if these persons do not wish it, but Allah has promised it in the Qur’an”, says Zeshan in a video in which he fumes against Sian (Stop islamiseringen av Norge), admittedly in a language that may be somewhat difficult for Norwegians to understand.
– We shall spread Islam
“Our researcher Sh. Abu Salih Zeshan confronts the criminal racists from SIAN who burned the Qur’an, and calls the Muslims to hold fast to the Qur’an and spread its peaceful message!” it says about that video. “We shall spread Islam’s message. Call the people to the one true religion”, says Zeshan Qureshi, and does not sound as though he is particularly inclined towards dialogue.
In a more recent video, from 1 September 2023, exactly one year before he began the position at MF, he spoke about whether Muslims should vote on behalf of Muslimer Stemmer, another initiative from Islam Net, where answers are promised on whether voting in Norway “is Kufr — an act that nullifies your faith? Is it Haram — a sin for which Allah will punish you?” The answer to that is found in this video.
In any case, that sort of activity, attitudes, and values do not appear to be what one would expect as a basis for employment at the former MF. Selbekk was not knocked off balance by employees who allegedly do not know the difference between racism and criticism of Islam. He also has a theory about how MF may have become so totally changed. How can one most effectively remove an institution from its Christian foundation of values? asks Selbekk in Dagen, and answers that the method is frighteningly simple:
“It is about replacing the people at the top. Bring in persons with different goals, alternative sets of values, and new theology. And presto, one can get an institution to work for what it was actually established to resist. Few places make the method and the results clearer than the educational institution that was formerly called Menighetsfakultetet, but which now bears the somewhat pompous name MF vitenskapelig høyskole. The modern MF has quite simply become what it was founded to combat.”
Imam at formerly conservative seminary promotes terror-designated organisation:
Imam at formerly conservative seminary promotes terror-designated organisation