Hege Storhaug

Sports and early life Storhaug was born in Arendal, and grew up on the island of Hisøy in Hisøy Municipality. She was an active volleyball player in her youth, and won the Norwegian Championship as part of the team Hisøy IL when she was fourteen and sixteen years old. When she was sixteen years old, she made her debut on the junior national team, as well as the senior national team.

She started her education at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in 1984, and graduated as a certified athletic trainer in 1987. She spoke in the media about her own eating disorder as a young athlete, which led to major public debate about the problem in Norway. In the wake of this, she co-founded the Interest Group for Women with Eating Disorders,

Journalism Storhaug worked as a journalist for the left-wing newspaper Klassekampen from 1989 to 1990. She completed a degree in journalism at the Norwegian School of Journalism in 1992, after which she worked as a freelance journalist. For further research she lived in Pakistan for two years in the mid-1990s, and wrote a book about her experience titled Mashallah. En reise blant kvinner i Pakistan. She thereafter conceived and researched the documentary Norske jenter omskjæres which revealed that girls in Norway were being subjected to female genital mutilation and that imams in the country secretly supported this practice. The program, which aired on TV 2 in October 2000 caused a considerable outcry, not least because imams who condemned this practice in interviews were caught on hidden cameras openly expressing their approval and encouragement of the procedure. The documentary won a SKUP diploma in 2000

In 2002, Storhaug released a report that described nine likely honor killings that had taken place in Norway by 2001.

Human Rights Service In 2002, Storhaug also joined and began as information director of the foundation Human Rights Service (HRS), She was later, in 2004 accused of having exerted undue pressure on the girls she had worked with for her documentaries. Among those who have praised Storhaug and HRS's work is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who in the first article she published as a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute wrote that while most non-governmental organizations in Europe "are embarrassingly silent" on the struggle for human rights for Muslim women and girls, "there is one in Norway that pays attention, Human Rights Service, run by a brave, determined woman, Hege Storhaug."

Storhaug's 2006 book Men størst av alt er friheten (later translated to English as But the Greatest of These Is Freedom), was praised by some critics and won the Southern Norway's Literary Prize. However, only a total of 929 votes were cast, and there were five books nominated for the prize. A high-profile participant in media debates about forced marriage, honor killing, genital mutilation, Islam, and questions relating to the cultural impact and economic sustainability of large-scale immigration, her research and outspokenness led her to become increasingly more controversial.

Her book Islam, den 11. landeplage (later translated to English as Islam: Europe Invaded. America Warned) became one of Norway's biggest bestsellers during the autumn of 2015, selling 20,000 copies in its first month with several new editions issued, despite being self-published and gaining little to none initial mainstream media coverage. The same year she led online voting for the "Name of the Year" award of newspaper Verdens Gang by a wide margin, but fell short of winning the award following a final selective opinion poll. By February 2016 the book had sold nearly 50,000 copies in Norway. Although Storhaug has officially distanced herself from the Eurabia theory since 2011, her 2015 book has according to Bangstad been seen to use "any number of far-right and counter-jihadist sources", including Eurabia author Bat Ye'or, while her use of an underlying notion of a conspiracy with "liberal elites" is "of course a variant of the 'Eurabia' thesis".

Works