by
Damien
F. Mackey
“It is a strange and indirect way of
validating the dictum of the great German-Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig:
Islam is a parody of Judaism and Christianity”.
“Spengler”
Introduction
As far as I am concerned, “the dictum” of Franz Rosenzweig - as presented
above by “Spengler” - is perfectly correct.
Moreover, that I believe that the Prophet Mohammed (Muhammad) had no
real historical existence (qua Mohammed),
is apparent from my series:
Scholars have long pointed out the historical problems associated with
the life of the Prophet Mohammed and the history of Islam, with some going even
so far as to cast doubt upon Mohammed’s actual existence. Biblico-historical
events,... more
Nineveh, which was destroyed by the Medes in c. 612 BC, and not
re-discovered until the C19th AD – “Before that, Nineveh, unlike the clearly
visible remains of other well-known sites such as Palmyra, Persepolis, and
Thebes, was invisible,... more
The ‘life’ of Mohammed will be shown to consist of, to a large extent,
a string of biblical episodes (relating to, for instance, Moses; David;
Job/Tobias; Jeremiah; Jesus Christ), but altered and/or greatly embellished,
and re-cast into... more
The name Montuemhat itself may have great significance following on
from my argument, albeit most controversial, that Tobias/Job was the 'matrix'
for the Prophet Mohammad.
In the following article, “Spengler” tells of the interesting case of “Muhammad Sven
Kalisch, a German convert to Islam” who likewise has disputed the very existence
of Mohammed: http://www.virtueonline.org/scandal-exposes-islams-weakness
Scandal exposes Islam's weakness
"Did
you hear about the German Gnostic?" "He couldn't keep a secret."
Just
such a Teutonic mystic is Professor Muhammad Sven Kalisch, a German convert to
Islam who teaches Muslim theology at the University of Munster. Kalisch
recently laid a Gnostic egg in the nest of Islam, declaring that the Prophet
Mohammed never existed, not at least in the way that the received version of
Islamic tradition claims he did. Given that Kalisch holds an academic chair
specifically funded to instruct teachers of Islam in Germany's school system, a
scandal ensued, first reported in the mainstream English-language press by
Andrew Higgins in the November 15 edition of the Wall Street Journal [2008].
On
closer reading, Kalisch offers a far greater challenge to Islam than the
secular critics who reject its claims. The headline that a Muslim academic has
doubts over the existence of the Prophet Mohammed is less interesting than why
he has such doubts. Kalisch does not want to harm Islam, but rather to expose
what he believes to be its true nature. Islam, he argues, really is a Gnostic
spiritual teaching masquerading as myth. Kalisch's heretical variant of Islam
may be close enough to the religion's original intent as to provoke a
re-evaluation of the original sources.
A
labor of love from inside the fortress of Islamic theology may accomplish what
all the ballistas of the critics never could from outside the walls. Koranic
criticism, I have argued for years (here and elsewhere - You say you want a
reformation? Asia Times Online, August 5, 2003) is the Achilles' heel of the
religion. That argument has been made about Christianity for years by Elaine
Pagels and other promoters of "Gnostic Gospels", and it is dead
wrong. In the case of Islam, though, it might be dead accurate.
Kalisch
is a Gnostic, a believer in secret spiritual truths that undergird the myths
manufactured for the edification of the peasantry. But he is a German Gnostic,
and therefore feels it necessary to lay out his secrets in thorough academic
papers with extensive footnotes and bibliography. It is a strange and indirect
way of validating the dictum of the great German-Jewish theologian Franz
Rosenzweig: Islam is a parody of Judaism and Christianity.
It
is in weird little byways of academia such as Kalisch wanders that the great
battles of religion will be fought out, not at academic conferences and photo
opportunities with the pope. For example: the Catholic Islamologists who
organized the November 4-7 meeting of Catholic and Muslim scholars in Rome
envision incremental reforms inside Islam through a more relaxed Turkish
version (see A Pyrrhic propaganda victory in Rome Asia Times Online, November
12, 2008 and Tin-opener theology from Turkey Asia Times Online, June 3, 2008).
Despite their best efforts at an orderly encounter with Islam, events have a
way of overtaking them. Last March, Pope Benedict personally received into the
Catholic faith the Egyptian-born Italian journalist Magdi Allam at the Easter
Vigil. In September, Kalisch dropped his own bombshell. In a way, it is
longer-acting and more deadly.
A
small group of Koran scholars, to be sure, has long doubted Mohammed's
existence. Their scholarship is sufficiently interesting, though, to question
whether it is worthwhile exposing the alleged misdeeds of the Prophet Mohammed,
who may not have existed in the first place (The Koranic quotations trap Asia
Times Online, May 15, 2007). Earlier this year, I reported on the progress of
the critics, as well as belated emergence of a treasure-trove of photocopies of
Koranic manuscripts hidden away by Nazi Islamologists (Indiana Jones meets the
Da Vinci Code Asia Times Online, January 18, 2008). The Nazis had a Gnostic
interest in Islam (call them "Gnazis"). The manuscripts and copies
are now under the control of mainstream scholars at the University of Berlin,
with deep ties to Arab countries.
Kalisch
is the first Muslim scholar to dispute the Prophet's existence, while
continuing to profess Muslim. If the Prophet did not exist, or in any case did
not dictate the Koran, "then it might be that the Koran was truly inspired
by God, a great narration from God, but it was not dictated word for word from
Allah to the Prophet", he told a German newspaper.
A
German Protestant who converted to Islam as a teenager in search of a religion
of reason, Kalisch can live with an alternative of reading of Islam. Very few of
the world's billion and a half Muslims can.
Islam
cannot abide historical criticism of the sort that Judaism and Christianity
have sustained for centuries. "Abie, if you're here, then who is that
there in my bed?," responds the Jewish wife in the old joke when her
husband catches her in delicto flagrante. No one can offer an alternative
explanation for the unique persistence of the Jewish people after 30 documented
centuries of Jewish life. "If Moses didn't exist," the Jews respond
to skeptics, "then who brought us out of Egypt?" Told that perhaps
they didn't come out of Egypt, the Jews will respond, "Then what are we
doing here today?"
Christians,
by the same token, read the writings of numerous individuals who either met
Jesus of Nazareth or took down the accounts of people who did, and who believed
that he was the only begotten Son of God. Proof of Jesus' divinity, though, is
entirely beside the point. If the Christian God wanted to rule by majesty and
power, he would not have come to earth as a mortal to die on the cross. The
Christian God asks for love and faith, not submission before majesty. The
Christian is not asked to prove the unprovable, but to love and believe.
Muslims have a different problem: if Mohammed did not receive the Koran from
God, then what are they doing there to begin with? Kalisch has the sort of
answer that only a German academic could love.
"We
hardly have original Islamic sources from the first two centuries of
Islam," Kalisch observes in a German-language paper available on the Muenster
University (website). It is fascinating reading, and since it is not yet
available in English I take the liberty of translating or summarizing a few
salient points. Responsibility for any errors of translation of interpretation
is my own.
Kalisch
continues, "And even when a source appears to come from this period,
caution is required. The mere assertion that a source stems from the first or
second century of the Islamic calendar means nothing. And even when a source
actually was written in the first or second century, the question always
remains of later manipulation. We do not tread on firm ground in the sources
until the third Islamic century."
This,
Kalisch observes, is extremely suspicious: how can a world religion have
erupted in a virtual literary vacuum? A great religion, moreover, inevitably
throws off heresies: where are the early Islamic heretics and Gnostics? Later
Islamic theologians knew the titles of some of their works, but the content
itself was lost. "The only explanation for the disappearance is that it
had long since become unusable theologically," he alleges of certain
Shi'ite sources.
Kalisch
draws on the well-known work of Patricia Crone and Martin Hinds, whose
criticism of the received version have a distinctly minority position in
Koranic scholarship:
It
is a striking fact that such documentary evidence as survives from the Sufnayid
period makes no mention of the messenger of god at all. The papyri do not refer
to him. The Arabic inscriptions of the Arab-Sasanian coins only invoke Allah,
not his rasul [messenger]; and the Arab-Byzantine bronze coins on which
Muhammad appears as rasul Allah, previously dated to the Sufyanid period, have
not been placed in that of the Marwanids. Even the two surviving pre-Marwanid
tombstones fail to mention the rasul.
The
great scandal of Islamic tradition is the absence of Islamic formulations from
coins and monuments dating from … its first two centuries, as well as the
presence of material obviously incompatible with Islam. "Coins and
inscriptions are incompatible with the Islamic writing of history,"
Kalisch concludes on the strength of older work, including Yehuda Nevo and [Judith]
Koren's Crossroads to Islam.
The
oldest inscription with the formulation "Mohammed Messenger of Allah"
is to found in the 66th year of Islamic reckoning, and after that used
continuously. But there also exist coins found in Palestine, probably minted in
Amman, on which the word "Muhammed" is found in Arabic script on one
side, and a picture of a man holding a cross on the other. Kalisch cites this
and a dozen other examples. Citing Nevo/Koren and other sources, Kalisch also
accepts the evidence that no Islamic conquest occurred as presented in much
later Islamic sources, but rather a peaceful transfer of power from the
Byzantine empire to its local Arab allies.
"To
be sure," Kalisch continues, "various explanations are possible for
the lack of mention of the Prophet in the early period, and it is no proof for
the non-existence of an historical Mohammed. But it is most astonishing, and
begs the question of the significance of Mohammed for the original Muslim
congregation in the case that he did exist."
The
numismatic, archeological, source-critical and other evidence against
acceptance of the received version of Islamic history was well developed by
other scholars. But it was never accepted by mainstream Orientalists. Cynics
might point to the fact that most Middle Eastern studies programs in the West
today are funded by Islamic governments, or depend on the good will of Middle
Eastern governments for access to source material. Academia is not only
corrupt, however, but credulous: the question arises: if Mohammed never
existed, or did not exist as he is portrayed, why was so much effort devoted in
later years to manufacturing thousands of pages of phony documentation in the
Hadith and elsewhere?
Why,
indeed, was the Mohammed story invented, by whom, and to what end? The story of
the Hegira, Mohammed's flight from Mecca to Medina allegedly in 622, provides a
clue, according to Kalisch. "No prophet is mentioned in the Koran as often
as Moses, and Muslim tradition always emphasized the great similarly between
Moses and Mohammed," he writes. "The central event in the life of
Moses, though, is the Exodus of the oppressed Children of Israel out of Egypt,
and the central event in the life of Mohammed is the Exodus of his oppressed
congregation out of Mecca to Medina ... The suspicion is great that the Hegira
appears only for this reason in the story of the Prophet, because his image should
emulate the image of Moses."
….
Something
very ancient and entirely genuine long buried within Islam may be struggling to
the surface, a cuckoo's egg, as it were, waiting to hatch. It is noteworthy
that Germany's Alevi community (immigrants from Turkey's 5-to-15 million strong
Alevi population) expressed solidarity with Kalisch when he came under attack
from other Muslim organizations.
Coming
from a minority within a minority, Kalisch has offered a new and credible
explanation of the motive behind the great reshuffling of Islamic sources
during the second and third centuries of the religion. I cannot evaluate
Kalisch's handling of the sources, but the principle he advances makes sense.
It is another crack in the edifice of Islam, but a most dangerous one, because
it came from the inside. ….
