Professor Hired for Outreach to Muslims Delivers a Jolt

[bijou]

MÃœNSTER, 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."

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There's a turn up for the books. Usually this sort of thing is directed at Christianity.

[Peter3_1]

Outside the Quran and the Hadith there is NO INDEPENDENT RECORD OF Mohammed. None. There are thousands of independent records of Jesus and his deciples.

Further, the acounts of MECCA during Mohammed's "lifetime"  don't match the historical record. So there is a better than even chance Mohammed was as real as Samuari Jack

[Jim]

hope he's got his life insurance paid up

[Texacon]

Could you even IMAGINE the outrage and the backlash should someone claim Jesus was fictional?!  OMG!!   

KC

[Lord Undies]

I'll believe ol' MO-HAM existed when I start hearing the nonreligious use "Prophet ****ing Muhammad" as an exclamation.

[Woody]

I'll believe ol' MO-HAM existed when I start hearing the nonreligious use "Prophet ******* Muhammad" as an exclamation.

I am so going to start using that...

German police, worried about a violent backlash, told the professor to move his religious-studies center to more-secure premises.

Please, lefties, tell me more of the Western world's intolerance towards others...

[lastparker]

Muhammad Sven

I don't know why, but that amuses me.

[Peter3_1]

You all understand the "problem" with there never having been a historical Mohammed? Other than with the Sufi, the Muslim religion is LITERALIST in nature. If the Hadith is complete fabrication, then the Quran is NOT the given word of Allah thru the prophet. Instead it is a pack of LIES , and who is the master of lies? And who, then, are the islamofascists "fighting" for? And if it is all lies, what happens to the souls of the suicide murderers?
Yes, it all falls apart and the followers who are islamofascisrts are no more than savages,Goddless savages, not Allah's messangers of truth. This is SO much more damaging than a cartoon could be.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Outside the Quran and the Hadith there is NO INDEPENDENT RECORD OF Mohammed. None. There are thousands of independent records of Jesus and his deciples.

Further, the acounts of MECCA during Mohammed's "lifetime"  don't match the historical record. So there is a better than even chance Mohammed was as real as Samuari Jack

Mock not Samurai Jack, Infidel!

As far as your later post about the ROPers being literalists who will fall apart if their book can't be substantiated, all I can say is it hasn't put a dent in the Mormons, whose own Holy Book is equally improbable of origin. 

[Peter3_1]

It is a cultural thing spanning 1500 years. There have been islamofascist from "day one" with Islam, AND THERE HAS ALWAYS BEEN A "MORAL DILEMMA" with the killing. RESOLVED with a book that bescended directly into Mohammed's hand written by God saying raping, robbing and murdering others is AOK under certain circumstances.

That book's a work of fiction, and for 1500 years generation after generation expected to arrive in Paradice after spending a lifetime wallowing in the blood and misery of others?! BIG TIME issues here.

BTW, the LDS people I've met tend not to be literalists, but pragmatists. Islam does not tollerate pragmatists, they are "apostates", people given the word of Allah, but go their own way. The Quran says KILL THEM. Which is why they "hate" the Sufi, as they are very "spiritual"  and their philosophers have already said Mohammed's not a necessary component, so the Shia and Suni speak ill of them, and the Wahhabists would ejoy killing them.

Please try not to apply "western" thought to the islamofascists, all it does is lead you away from understanding of who it is we fight.

[Chris_]

Could you even IMAGINE the outrage and the backlash should someone claim Jesus was fictional?!  OMG!!   

KC

It happens all the time.  Outside if idiots like the clowns at WBC, I don't see many who get up in arms about it, and I've yet to hear of somebody beheaded - since the 16th century, anyway - because he didn't believe Jesus was real.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Please try not to apply "western" thought to the islamofascists, all it does is lead you away from understanding of who it is we fight.

That's exactly why it won't faze them for a nanosecond.  It will simply become an article of faith with them that the Q'ran is true and everything else is lies, which isn't even a short putt from where they are now anyway.

[Texacon]

It happens all the time.  Outside if idiots like the clowns at WBC, I don't see many who get up in arms about it, and I've yet to hear of somebody beheaded - since the 16th century, anyway - because he didn't believe Jesus was real.

Yeah, that's why I put the     on the post.

They claim Jesus was a fictional character all the time (among other outrageous claims) and it is all water under the bridge.  Yet Islam, the religion of peace and tolerance, goes balistic at the drop of a hat.

KC

[Peter3_1]

We don't get upset when the ignorant claim Jesus was not real, because there are THOUSANDS of contemproary references to him by other than followers. Abetter attack is an attack on his Divinity, that is always a matter of faith.

Actually, tanker, as noted , there IS a branch of Islam that has accepted the idea that Mohammed need not have been historical. And have done so for several hundreds of years.

It is IMPOSSIBLE for the Wahhabists to accept this, or the the islamofascists.  But, as we kill them off over time, we might just get the "conversion" rate we need to have Islam become a true religion of peace.

http://www.rim.org/muslim/sufism.htm


Anyway, my opinion is that Sufism may alow the pragmatic Muslims to continue to be "Muslim" and de "spiritual" without violence.