Scandal exposes Islam's weakness

maynard · Nov 18, 2008

Asia Times Online :: Asian News, Business and Economy.

"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

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.
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