Sumaya’s father wants minaret in Bodø – mosque employed imam who wants to islamise Norway

The father of the debater Sumaya Jirde Ali is the general manager of the mosque that wants to build a 12.5-metre-high minaret on a mosque in Bodø. There will never be any question of issuing the call to prayer from it, Abdi Jirde Ali tells Document. A few years ago, their former imam, Waleed Hakeem, described how wonderful it would be when today’s small number of Muslims had Islamised Northern Norway by becoming many.

Not so many yet

There are only 900+ Muslims living here, but imagine in 50 or 100 years what these young Muslims will do in this part of the world, when their children and grandchildren grow up here and spread Allah’s teachings, and in a place with unusual prayer and fasting times, which they happily struggle to observe!

Waleed Hakeem wrote on Facebook on 30 June 2017. That is, on the Facebook page of his business as an imam, which he calls Dr. Waleed Hakeem – The Travelling Imam. And further:

Alhamdulillah, teaching young Muslims about Islam has a different flavour in Arctic Northern Norway! We talked about the stories of the Sahabah (the companions), and I wondered to myself, what would these Sahabah feel when they are resurrected on the Day of Judgement, and find out that their names and history were mentioned in this extreme part of the world, 1,400 years after their death? How happy would they not be to know that the hard work they did for a few years has lived on and become a legacy that inspires Muslims forever?

So it is hard work to stay in the cold, Christian north in order to help Islamise Northern Norway, but the legacy, that is, this effort, will inspire the Islamic world forever. That, at least, is one way the statement can be interpreted.

Converts Norwegians

Imam Hakeem also thanks a Norwegian local convert for making excellent arrangements.

“He who does not thank people does not thank Allah, and I wanted to give a special thanks and special Doaa to brother Ørjan Shaheem Askvik, a revert (convert) born and raised here, for being such an amazing host, and for his brilliant work as director of the Masjid and the one who gathered the youth and people for the lectures. Please remember him and your brothers and sisters here in your prayers!”

Imam Hakeem wrote in his expression of thanks to Ørjan

Masjid is Arabic for mosque.

We do not know what caused Ørjan to convert to Islam, but Waleed Hakeem has had Norwegians convert at the Bodø mosque. On 11 January 2019, he wrote on Facebook:

“Alhamdulillah, we had a strong, Arctic wind today, but that did not stop the young Viking, the Norwegian Alexander, from coming to my office to say the shahada and accept Islam. And I quoted in my speech: ‘The Hour will not come until Islam covers EVERY SINGLE CORNER of this planet’,” Hakeem wrote, posting a photograph of the two of them. Both in Islamic garb.

Otherwise, there are several Muslims congratulating the imam on a “job well done”. For the cause of Islam, we must assume.

Vil reise 12,5 meter høy minaret i Bodø sentrum – lokalavisen stengte kommentarfeltet

School pupils taught about Islam at the Bodø mosque

We do not know exactly when Waleed Hakeem began as an imam at Islamsk Kultursenter Nordland, but the first time we see him mentioned on the mosque’s Facebook page appears to be 17 June 2017. They then wrote alongside photographs:

Youth gathering with Waleed from Canada. He told stories about the Sahaba (ra), followed by questions. Jazakallah khair to everyone who took part.

By 25 November that same year, at any rate, he was fully active and was apparently the host when upper-secondary school pupils were taught about Islam at the mosque.

“Pleasant visit from Bodø upper-secondary school this week. The pupils were given a lecture on Islam, followed by questions from engaged pupils,” the Islamic centre in Bodø wrote on Facebook, with a photograph of the imam and all the school pupils.

Sumaya named Bodø Resident of the Year

A couple of weeks later, Sumaya Jirde Ali was congratulated by the mosque, although this was hardly written by Imam Hakeem (as he writes in English, interspersed with Arabic, including in his reports from the Bodø mosque, so the quotations have been translated by us.):

Mashallah! We can only congratulate sister Sumayah on the Bodø Resident of the Year award! A well-deserved award, and we hope Sumayah continues her civic engagement in the time ahead. May Allah grant success, wrote the Islamic centre.

Islamsk Kultursenter Nordland also has its own youth section, IKN Ungdom, and Imam Waleed has been active there as well.

I invite you all 18:30 insha’Allah after isha, Imam Waleed wrote in one of the videos he posted on the youth page in January 2018. He does not speak Norwegian.

Bodø imam Waleed Hakeem is so enthusiastic about Islam’s conquest of Christian lands that he serves as a tour leader to convey it. He was greatly delighted when Turkey in 2021 celebrated the conquest of Constantinople on 29 May 1453 by projecting a light show onto Hagia Sophia cathedral, now a mosque, with the year 1453 written in fire. The mosque in Bodø recommended the tours. Photo: Social media.

Expert on Islam’s “lost paradises” and conquests

Imam Hakeem Waleed, or Sheikh Hakeem Abdul Hakeem, or Hakeem Abdulhakeem, as he also calls himself, did not stay continuously in Bodø during the years he was associated with the mosque there. His speciality is partly to promote Islam in non-Muslim countries, so that people convert and the countries become more Muslim. And partly to serve as a tour leader or hold courses and lectures on Islam’s lost paradise, which many wish to reconquer. This applies not least to Al-Andalus. Waleed regards himself as an expert on the period when Spain was occupied by Islam, and runs a travel company on the side. There is apparently great interest in hearing about the time when the Muslims conquered and colonised the Christians’ lands. Until the last of them were driven out in 1492, something the Spaniards have since celebrated with annual festivals.

Halal seagull eggs

On 11 May 2018, Hakeem was once again in Northern Norway and posted photographs of himself eating seagull eggs, claiming that the seagull eggs, that is, traditional Northern Norwegian food, were halal.
On 23 October 2017, he posted that he was going to take part in the NUF conference in Stockholm as one of the speakers in an Islamic network for “the future of youth”, organised at Rinkeby school.
In October 2017, he was also in the only country in Europe that now has no mosque. That is, Slovakia, but despite all the “horrific discrimination against Islam” in the country, he found something uplifting for Islamists: On the wall of Slovakia’s best-known castle, Zamok Bojnice, there is in fact the name “Allah” and something Islamic, because as part of the Hungarian kingdom the country was occupied by Muslims for more than 150 years. Which for Hakeem is wonderful to think about.

Works with imam subject to an entry ban

As recently as May 2025, the former Bodø imam boasted that he had worked with Mufti Menk for 12 years, an imam regarded as extreme. He was denied entry to the United Kingdom as early as 2013, to Singapore in 2017, and in 2018 was placed on Denmark’s list of hate preachers who are to be denied entry. Mufti Menk was placed on the list again in October 2025, as was Mohamad Baajour, the imam who was due to preach at the University of Oslo last week. Before it was discovered that inclusion on this list means that these people “seek to undermine Danish laws and values and support parallel conceptions of law”.

And inclusion on the list in Denmark means that they are to be denied entry throughout the Schengen area.

The previous denial of entry to Mufti Menk is said to have been due, among other things, to his working for segregation rather than diversity, and because he is said to have stated that homosexuals are “worse than animals”. The mufti’s full name is Ismail ibn Musa Menk, and he was born in Rhodesia to parents from India.

The former Bodø imam tagged the post praising Mufti Menk with, among other things, #IslamicLeadership #DawahMovement #UnityInUmmah #MuftiMenk #TravellingImam #FaithInMotion #UmmahRising. Which means something along the lines of Islam leads, the Islam movement is spreading, Islam is in motion and Islamic unity is rising.

Was at the Ummah conference at Kuben in Oslo

We do not find many mentions of Waleed Hakeem in the Norwegian press, but Rights.no covered him when Rabita’s youth section had to withdraw a speaker from the so-called Ummah conference at Kuben upper-secondary school in Oslo. That is, Kamal El-Mekki, because of overt extremism. Rights also mentioned Waleed Hakeem in the article from October 2015:

Abdulhakeem is also the leader and imam of the Saudi-funded Jami Mosque in Toronto. Close ties between the Brotherhood and this mosque have been pointed out by US justice authorities.
Abdulhakeem is also a so-called professor at the institute called Al Mahgrib, an institute that includes a number of open hate preachers. One of them is Said Rageah, who, for example, wants Allah to destroy the enemies of Islam and believes that Jews and Christians are “cursed”. Another example is Abdullah Hakim Quick. He insists on killing homosexuals, on the grounds that: – I am not going to change my religion.

Rights wrote in the article More Extremism at the Conference of Norges Unge Muslimer.

We have asked the mosque in Bodø how long Hakeem was an imam there, but have not yet received a satisfactory answer from its leader, Abdi Jirde Ali. Hakeem himself contributed reports from Bodø in both 2014 and 2019, including via the Muslim channel 5Pillars. As well as throughout the intervening period.

Waleed Hakeem was also a guide at the Rabita mosque in Oslo in 2016, when this journalist took part in a journalism course that included visits to three mosques. The course does not appear to have been repeated. Photograph from that time in this article: