The imam employed at the former Menighetsfakultetet, Zeshan Ullah Qureshi, advertises for Islamic Relief Norge, an organisation linked to the Muslim Brotherhood (Det muslimske brorskap), and which is being banned or deprived of funding by an increasing number of countries. In Sweden, the organisation was stripped of all funding in January, after having received more than one billion kroner from Swedish taxpayers over just ten years.

Document revealed a couple of weeks ago that the former Menighetsfakultetet, now called MF vitenskapelig høyskole, had employed an imam from Islam Net in a research position. Zeshan Ullah Qureshi, brother of Islam Net leader Fahad Qureshi, had already studied Islam for nine years in Medina in Saudi Arabia. Yet those who now preside over what for more than a hundred years was Norway’s conservative theological college considered that the Islam Net imam deserved several hundred thousand kroner annually to continue researching Islam at MF. More specifically, tafsīr (Qur’anic exegesis), Qur’an translation, and European Islam reception, according to himself.

Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands cut support to Islamic Relief

The imam was also involved when Islam Net was in Saudi Arabia to raise 60 million kroner to purchase Oslo Skytesenter in order to convert it into a mosque and the like, and he is not solely occupied with tafsīr. Over the past couple of months, he has also vigorously promoted Islamic Relief, both on his own Facebook page and on the page of the highly controversial organisation, which is so controversial that Germany cut all support to Islamic Relief in 2020, the Netherlands in 2021, while the organisation is classified as terrorist in the United Arab Emirates. It has now also been deprived of all public support in Sweden.

The United States has also begun to scrutinise Islamic Relief. “USAID provided millions to Islamic Relief, whose Gaza branch openly cooperates with senior terrorists in Gaza, including Hamas politburo member Ghazi Hamad,” wrote Document in February.

The Muslim Brotherhood (Det muslimske brorskap), with which Islamic Relief is considered affiliated, is also classified as a terrorist organisation. The Brotherhood is banned in Muslim countries such as Egypt, Jordan, the Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Islamic Relief is also prohibited from working with Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, out of concern that they may be radicalised by the organisation. Party leader Ebba Busch and the Christian Democrats (Kristdemokraterna) seek to ensure that the Muslim Brotherhood is designated as a terrorist organisation by Sweden.

Documented ties to the Brotherhood

In Sweden, several experts on Islamism, the Muslim Brotherhood and terrorism have warned against Islamic Relief. Not least the researcher and author Sameh Egyptson, who has completed a doctorate on the subject, in which he documents that Islamic Relief is part of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Received 1.3 billion from Sweden, now zero

In January, the warnings also reached Swedish authorities, and the grants to Islamic Relief Sweden went from approximately 1.3 billion Swedish kroner over ten years to zero kroner. The millions had flowed through Sweden’s equivalent of Norad, namely Sida, as Islamic Relief presents itself as an aid organisation. Sida halted the payments because Islamic Relief, due to alleged links to violent extremism and anti-democratic activities.

The Centre for Preventing Violent Extremism (Centrum mot våldsbejakande extremism, CVE) in Sweden had then examined Islamic Relief for Sida and found that “individuals” within Islamic Relief Sweden and related networks have or have had connections to “violent extremism or anti-democratic environments”, writes Expressen.

A few days later, Expressen wrote that Islamic Relief can be linked to an Islamist network, including individuals associated with those who were forced to close a Muslim school because the authorities feared they were radicalising pupils, namely Framstegsskolan in Rågsved. Of five individuals suspected of extremist connections in Islamic Relief, three were also linked to the school that was deprived of funding and closed.

Disseminated totalitarian Islamist ideology

One of the former board members, who has been a central part of the school’s development, is considered by Säpo to have played an important role in the dissemination of a totalitarian Islamist ideology in Sweden over several decades. This includes links to the Muslim Brotherhood, which aims to establish a global caliphate based on sharia, something that is “incompatible with Swedish fundamental rights and freedoms”, writes Expressen.

MF doctoral fellow Zeshan Ullah Qureshi, who thus holds a form of research position at what has been Norway’s theological college, was presented as an imam in one of the promotional videos for Islamic Relief in which he appears, as recently as February this year. Otherwise, he regularly participates in promotional videos for the controversial organisation. Subsequently presented only as a PhD researcher in Islamic studies, without mentioning MF.

Images from videos in which Zeshan Ullah Qureshi, researcher at MF, promotes the controversial organisation Islamic Relief. From respectively 8 February, 10 March and 17 March 2026.

MF Rector Stålsett satisfied with the appointment of Qureshi

Dagen has followed up our revelation of the imam at MF, and Zeshan Qureshi is said to have told the leadership at the former Menighetsfakultetet that he no longer works in Islam Net. This is believed by the rector of MF, Sturla Stålsett, who otherwise does not appear particularly concerned.

To Dagen, MF Rector Sturla Stålsett states:

– His background was not taken as the basis for his employment here with us. And as I understand it, he is no longer active there, says Stålsett.

– He is no longer active there?

– As I understand it, he is no longer active there. But as an employer, I neither can nor will enter into employees’ religious practice. That lies outside my mandate, unless it affects his work duties. And I cannot see that it does.

Rector Stålsett appears very satisfied with the appointment of Qureshi. However, neither he nor Dagen appears to have noted that the MF researcher Qureshi is now a spokesperson for an organisation that is regarded by very many, both nations and experts, as extremist. That is to say Islamic Relief.

Leaders in Islamic Relief glorified terror and the killing of Jews

In 2020, Document revealed that two of three board members of Islamic Relief Norway (IRN) had to resign from their positions after it was revealed that they had supported terror against Israelis. Both the chairman and a board member resigned. This included the head of Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), Tayeb Abdoun, to which the organisation in Norway is so closely affiliated that Abdoun in IRW also served as chairman of IRN.

The head of IRW, Tayeb Abdoun, was recently forced to resign from his position after the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger documented that he had glorified the killing of three Israelis in Jerusalem on 13 October 2015, wrote Document.

“Tages-Anzeiger revealed last week that Tayeb Abdoun celebrated the antisemitic triple murder by posting an image of a knife and a thumbs up on Facebook along with the words: ‘Place the bodies of the Jews on the mountaintops, so no dogs in Palestine need go hungry.’ The attack was carried out by two Palestinians with knives and firearms on a bus in East Jerusalem.”

This Kaissar Ben Bahri Bac-Ali, who also sat on the board of Islamic Relief Norway, found shocking, stating that it was entirely new to him.

Praised terror

The other board member in 2020 was Abdo Samie Nasri, like Bac-Ali resident in Oslo. Document confronted Nasri when he maintained that one should not support killing or terror.

– But then I wonder the following: On your Facebook page, in 2014 you praised two terrorists after an attack on a synagogue in Jerusalem in which six people were killed.

– I ..?

– Yes.

Nasri claimed that he was unaware of the post and asked to have it sent to him. He was sent the link to his own post by email. Following this conversation, Document succeeded in contacting Abdo Samie Nasri. On Friday evening, Nasri’s Facebook page disappeared. It was no longer possible to view the post supporting the two Hamas terrorists, nor any other content on his page. Before the page disappeared, it was also possible to see from a post that Nasri admires the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who has praised the Holocaust.

In 2026, Kaissar Ben Bahri Bac-Ali, daily operations manager for property management at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, has been promoted to chairman of Islamic Relief Norway, and is thus likely responsible for the former Islam Net imam—now researcher at MF, Zeshan Ullah Qureshi—being engaged to promote the controversial organisation. Which in certain circles may not be controversial, but rather the opposite?

Det tidligere Menighets­fakultetet har ansatt imam fra Islam Net