Hans Jansen (Arabist)

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Hans Jansen

Johannes Juliaan Gijsbert "Hans" Jansen (born November 17, 1942 in Amsterdam ; † May 5, 2015 ) was a Dutch Arabist , Islamic scholar and columnist who mainly deals with early Islam and Islamic fundamentalism in his numerous publications .

Hans Jansen belonged to the revisionist branch of Islamic studies, which fundamentally doubts the historical credibility of the Islamic traditions about the beginnings of Islam , which only emerged 150 to 200 years after the death of Muhammad .

Life

Hans Jansen's parents were strictly Calvinist . At 17, Jansen began studying theology at the University of Amsterdam , but after a year switched to studying Arabic and Semitic languages . In 1966 he spent a year in Cairo to learn Arabic. He then continued his studies at the University of Leiden , where he received his doctorate in 1974.

Jansen taught at the universities of Groningen, Leiden and Amsterdam and was director of the Dutch Institute for Arabic Studies in Cairo. Then he became a lecturer in Leiden . From 2003 to 2008 he was an adjunct professor for contemporary Islamic thinking at the University of Utrecht .

In 1988 Jansen converted to the Roman Catholic Church . At that time, he also thought about converting to Islam , he later said: Islam has "a very attractive and powerful culture, a high culture, great beauty. An enormous attraction." Jansen was married twice. His first wife was Eefje van Santen, the daughter of the communist politician Joop van Santen. He had three children with his second wife. One son is a cabaret artist and harshly criticizes Islam.

Political commitment

As a student Hans Jansen belonged to a left on grouping and left the room in protest when someone the word " Israel expressed". The turning point in his attitude towards Islam was the assassination attempt on Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981. Some of Jansen's friends were directly involved in the attack.

Jansen was friends with Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh . In columns, interviews and talk shows, Jansen criticized Islam and the way politics dealt with Islam. He advised Geert Wilders and appeared for him as a witness and expert witness in lawsuits defending freedom of expression . In the 2014 European elections , Jansen was elected to the European Parliament for Wilder's Partij voor de Vrijheid .

research

Hans Jansen belonged to the "revisionist" or historical-critical school of Islamic studies. Jansen fundamentally doubted the historical reliability of the Islamic traditions about the beginnings of Islam, which only came into being 150 to 200 years after the death of Muhammad.

In his main work De Historische Mohammed , German: Mohammed - a biography , Jansen discusses the descriptions of the prophetic biography of Ibn Ishaq or Ibn Hischām , a text relevant to traditional Islam, section by section. He shows in detail why the respective representation is not believable. Jansen shows internal contradictions, contradictions to other non-Quranic historical sources, embellishments and exaggerations by later authors , politically or theologically motivated distortions of the representation, symbolic meanings of supposedly historical names, literary designs of the representation e.g. B. according to biblical models, but also chronological and calendar unreliability. In some cases, Hans Jansen only summarizes research results that other scientists had already developed before him.

Some examples:

  • Although there were leap months at the time of Mohammed , which had to be included in the lunar calendar in large numbers and which were only later abolished (allegedly by Mohammed), not a single one of the countless events documented and precisely dated by Ibn Ishaq occurs in such a leap month.
  • The most precise dating of countless events by an author who only wrote them down 150 years apart is implausible per se .
  • The portrayal of a particularly close bond between Mohammed and his wife Aisha is politically and theologically motivated: Aisha was the daughter of the caliph Abu Bakr , who succeeded Mohammed against Ali’s will . In order to secure this succession against claims of the Shiites , who favored Ali, the connection of the daughter of Abu Bakr with Mohammed was particularly emphasized: Aisha was allegedly the Prophet's favorite wife, and the Prophet allegedly married Aisha at an unusually early age.
  • The depiction of the massacre of the Jewish tribe of the Banu Quraiza is politically or theologically motivated: As the “Treaty of Medina” shows, the Jews were initially part of the Ummah and were also addressed as “believers”; see. also the research of Prof. Fred Donner . As Islam later, after the death of Mohammed, breaking away from Judaism, created anti-Jewish interpretations of the past. The triple betrayal of Mohammed by three Jewish tribes is a literary design based on the biblical model, e.g. As the threefold denial of Peter to Jesus , and the sole reason historically dubious. There are other narrations about the same event that only the leaders of the tribe were punished, not every single male member of the tribe. The names of the three allegedly treacherous Jewish tribes do not appear in the "Treaty of Medina" either. After all, such a massacre would not have gone unnoticed, not even in the time of Muhammad, and especially not when you consider that the victims were Jews: Jews usually lived on international trading networks, and Jews are known to record their histories in writing. The massacre most likely never took place.
  • The representations of Ibn Ishaq are generally known for overdrawing the achievements of the Prophet in a striking way. In Ibn Ishaq, Mohammed always kills more enemies than in other traditions. The portrayal of the prophet's sexual potency, who allegedly was able to satisfy all his wives in one night, is also questionably exaggerated. The portrayal of Mohammed as illiterate falls into the same category . The revelation of the Koran text becomes all the more miraculous and the achievement of the Prophet all the more astonishing if Mohammed was illiterate.
  • The story of Muhammad's message to the emperor of Byzantium that he should convert justifies the Arab conquests in retrospect as a religious Islamic expansion .

Jansen points out that the historically questionable Islamic traditions are of great importance for the interpretation of the Koran. Because the Koran usually leaves the situation for which a revelation was made open. The historical context is only hinted at in the Koran. Many Islamic traditions arose long after Muhammad's death from mere guesswork as to the situation in which a verse from the Koran was revealed. The interpretation of the Koran has since been narrowed down by the historically questionable Islamic traditions.

In the afterword, Jansen pleads for a non-existence of Muhammad , referring to the previous findings of his historical-critical research . Jansen thus belongs to a minority within the "revisionist" school that takes this extreme position. The work De Historische Mohammed was z. B. positively discussed by Prof. Karl-Heinz Ohlig . A respectful but critical review wrote z. B. Stefan Weidner on Qantara.de. The historian Dan Diner has exuberantly praised Mohammed von Hans Jansen as a work of the Enlightenment .

Publications

  • The Interpretation of the Koran in Modern Egypt , 1974 (as JJG Jansen; 1980 edition: limited preview in Google Book Search)
  • The Neglected Duty: The Creed of Sadat's Assassins and Islamic Resurgence in the Middle East , Macmillan, New York 1986 (as Johannes JG Jansen), ISBN 0-02-916340-4
  • Inleiding tot de Islam , 1987 (as JJG Jansen)
  • The Koran uit het Arabic Vertaald by Prof. dr. JH Kramers , 1992 (edited by Dr. Asad Jaber & Dr. Johannes JG Jansen)
  • The Dual Nature of Islamic Fundamentalism , 1997 (as Johannes JG Jansen)
  • Nieuwe Inleiding tot de Islam , 1998 (as JJG Jansen)
  • Het Nut van God , 2001
  • God heeft gezegd: terreur, tolerantie en de onvoltooide modernisering van de islam , 2003
  • De radicaal-Islamitische ideologie: Van Ibn Taymiyya tot Osama ben Laden, Oratie Universiteit van Utrecht, February 3, 2004 (as Johannes JG Jansen)
  • De Historische Mohammed: de Mekkaanse verhalen , Amsterdam 2005
  • De Historische Mohammed: de Verhalen uit Medina , Amsterdam 2007
  • Mohammed - a biography , CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 3-406-56858-0 . German translation of De Historische Mohammed in one volume.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Sheila Kamerman / Andreas Kouwenhoven: Zij aan zij met Wilders tegen de islam in: NRC Handelsblad May 10, 2014
  2. ↑ See Jansen, Mohammed - a biography , 2008
  3. ↑ Karl-Heinz Ohlig: A reading pleasure , review of: Hans Jansen, Mohammed - a biography, in: imprimatur No. 41, 2008
  4. ↑ Stefan Weidner: Die Mohammed-Fiktion , review of: Hans Jansen, Mohammed - a biography, in: Qantara.de 23 May 2008
  5. ↑ Dan Diner: Mohammed, the New Testament and Little Red Riding Hood , review of: Hans Jansen, Mohammed - a biography, in: DIE WELT 03/30/2008
personal data
SURNAME Jansen, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jansen, Johannes Juliaan Gijsbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch Arabist, Islamic scholar and columnist
DATE OF BIRTH November 17, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Amsterdam
DATE OF DEATH May 5, 2015