WSJ: Islamic Theologian's Theory: It's Likely the Prophet Muhammad Never Existed
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November 15, 2008
Professor Hired for Outreach to Muslims Delivers a Jolt
Islamic Theologian's Theory: It's Likely the Prophet Muhammad Never
Existed
By ANDREW HIGGINS
MÜNSTER, Germany -- Muhammad Sven Kalisch, a Muslim convert and
Germany's first professor of Islamic theology, fasts during the Muslim
holy month, doesn't like to shake hands with Muslim women and has
spent years studying Islamic scripture. Islam, he says, guides his
life.
So it came as something of a surprise when Prof. Kalisch announced the
fruit of his theological research. His conclusion: The Prophet
Muhammad probably never existed.
Muslims, not surprisingly, are outraged. Even Danish cartoonists who
triggered global protests a couple of years ago didn't portray the
Prophet as fictional. German police, worried about a violent backlash,
told the professor to move his religious-studies center to more-secure
premises.
"We had no idea he would have ideas like this," says Thomas Bauer, a
fellow academic at Münster University who sat on a committee that
appointed Prof. Kalisch. "I'm a more orthodox Muslim than he is, and
I'm not a Muslim."
When Prof. Kalisch took up his theology chair four years ago, he was
seen as proof that modern Western scholarship and Islamic ways can
mingle -- and counter the influence of radical preachers in Germany.
He was put in charge of a new program at Münster, one of Germany's
oldest and most respected universities, to train teachers in state
schools to teach Muslim pupils about their faith.
Muslim leaders cheered and joined an advisory board at his Center for
Religious Studies. Politicians hailed the appointment as a sign of
Germany's readiness to absorb some three million Muslims into
mainstream society. But, says Andreas Pinkwart, a minister responsible
for higher education in this north German region, "the results are
disappointing."
Prof. Kalisch, who insists he's still a Muslim, says he knew he would
get in trouble but wanted to subject Islam to the same scrutiny as
Christianity and Judaism. German scholars of the 19th century, he
notes, were among the first to raise questions about the historical
accuracy of the Bible.
Many scholars of Islam question the accuracy of ancient sources on
Muhammad's life. The earliest biography, of which no copies survive,
dated from roughly a century after the generally accepted year of his
death, 632, and is known only by references to it in much later texts.
But only a few scholars have doubted Muhammad's existence. Most say
his life is better documented than that of Jesus.
"Of course Muhammad existed," says Tilman Nagel, a scholar in
Göttingen and author of a new book, "Muhammad: Life and Legend." The
Prophet differed from the flawless figure of Islamic tradition, Prof.
Nagel says, but "it is quite astonishing to say that thousands and
thousands of pages about him were all forged" and there was no such
person.
All the same, Prof. Nagel has signed a petition in support of Prof.
Kalisch, who has faced blistering criticism from Muslim groups and
some secular German academics. "We are in Europe," Prof. Nagel says.
"Education is about thinking, not just learning by heart."
Prof. Kalisch's religious studies center recently removed a sign and
erased its address from its Web site. The professor, a burly 42-year-
old, says he has received no specific threats but has been denounced
as apostate, a capital offense in some readings of Islam.
"Maybe people are speculating that some idiot will come and cut off my
head," he said during an interview in his study.
A few minutes later, an assistant arrived in a panic to say a
suspicious-looking digital clock had been found lying in the hallway.
Police, called to the scene, declared the clock harmless.
A convert to Islam at age 15, Prof. Kalisch says he was drawn to the
faith because it seemed more rational than others. He embraced a
branch of Shiite Islam noted for its skeptical bent. After working
briefly as a lawyer, he began work in 2001 on a postdoctoral thesis in
Islamic law in Hamburg, to go through the elaborate process required
to become a professor in Germany.
The Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S. that year appalled Mr. Kalisch but
didn't dent his devotion. Indeed, after he arrived at Münster
University in 2004, he struck some as too conservative. Sami Alrabaa,
a scholar at a nearby college, recalls attending a lecture by Prof.
Kalisch and being upset by his doctrinaire defense of Islamic law,
known as Sharia.
In private, he was moving in a different direction. He devoured works
questioning the existence of Abraham, Moses and Jesus. Then "I said to
myself: You've dealt with Christianity and Judaism but what about your
own religion? Can you take it for granted that Muhammad existed?"
He had no doubts at first, but slowly they emerged. He was struck, he
says, by the fact that the first coins bearing Muhammad's name did not
appear until the late 7th century -- six decades after the religion
did.
He traded ideas with some scholars in Saarbrücken who in recent years
have been pushing the idea of Muhammad's nonexistence. They claim that
"Muhammad" wasn't the name of a person but a title, and that Islam
began as a Christian heresy.
Prof. Kalisch didn't buy all of this. Contributing last year to a book
on Islam, he weighed the odds and called Muhammad's existence "more
probable than not." By early this year, though, his thinking had
shifted. "The more I read, the historical person at the root of the
whole thing became more and more improbable," he says.
He has doubts, too, about the Quran. "God doesn't write books," Prof.
Kalisch says.
Some of his students voiced alarm at the direction of his teaching. "I
began to wonder if he would one day say he doesn't exist himself,"
says one. A few boycotted his lectures. Others sang his praises.
Prof. Kalisch says he "never told students 'just believe what Kalisch
thinks' " but seeks to teach them to think independently. Religions,
he says, are "crutches" that help believers get to "the spiritual
truth behind them." To him, what matters isn't whether Muhammad
actually lived but the philosophy presented in his name.
This summer, the dispute hit the headlines. A Turkish-language German
newspaper reported on it with gusto. Media in the Muslim world picked
up on it.
Germany's Muslim Coordinating Council withdrew from the advisory board
of Prof. Kalisch's center. Some Council members refused to address him
by his adopted Muslim name, Muhammad, saying that he should now be
known as Sven.
German academics split. Michael Marx, a Quran scholar at the Berlin-
Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, warned that Prof. Kalisch's views
would discredit German scholarship and make it difficult for German
scholars to work in Muslim lands. But Ursula Spuler-Stegemann, an
Islamic studies scholar at the University of Marburg, set up a Web
site called solidaritymuhammadkalisch.com and started an online
petition of support.
Alarmed that a pioneering effort at Muslim outreach was only stoking
antagonism, Münster University decided to douse the flames. Prof.
Kalisch was told he could keep his professorship but must stop
teaching Islam to future school teachers.
The professor says he's more determined than ever to keep probing his
faith. He is finishing a book to explain his thoughts. It's in English
instead of German because he wants to make a bigger impact. "I'm
convinced that what I'm doing is necessary. There must be a free
discussion of Islam," he says.
—Almut Schoenfeld in Berlin contributed to this article.