ABID RAJA has had strong views on religion, coercion and violence since he was a child, and was obliged—like other kids of Pakistani origin growing up in Norway—to attend classes of Koranic instruction at the local mosque. They did not learn very much about what the Koran actually said, because the verses they were chanting were in Arabic and their mother tongue was Urdu. But they did find out that if you misbehaved, by chatting to another child or sucking on a sweet, the teacher was liable to hit you or even grab you by the hair.
