Islamic Theologian's Theory: It's Likely the Prophet Muhammad Never Existed

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.

…
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.




Oh, dear… Continue reading at the Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122669909279629451.html

Rintrah wrote on Dec 18^th, 2008 at 9:58pm:


Not really. More likely it says that the man who had written the book isn't prophet. On another hand even if he was a prophet the words could've come from Shaitan not from God. The reality is you can not proof it either way so you just have to believe and that is not illogical at all... and nor circular arguments please we already agreed that they are not valid.

Rintrah wrote on Dec 18^th, 2008 at 10:34pm:


Please point out where exactly I use circular argument.
I am talking about possibilities only. I am not saying that God exist or vice verse. But I do disagree with the statement that "The choice between belief in God and disbelief in God being a question that has to be answered" as we agreed that it is impossible to prove.

BTW, "the question 'was Mohammed (sws) a real person'" has high probability "yeas" for answer, please note that here I talk about probability not possibility as possibility for "no" answer still exist but with smaller probability then "yes".

Rintrah wrote on Dec 19^th, 2008 at 1:19am:


It is not the same. You state that there is no Prophet then there is no Koran while I say that Koran is there but it could've been written by a man who was not the Prophet.

Your confusion is due to your hastiness to dive in complexity before learning basics like for example fallacy of circular argument.

Rintrah wrote on Dec 19^th, 2008 at 2:57am:


Legitimacy of the book as divine may be lost if there is nothing behind the words but book still would be here, e.g. the book of Darwin isn't claimed to be divine but it is still inspire majority of biology scientists.

Rintrah wrote on Dec 19^th, 2008 at 3:22am:



If message is valid it does not need validation by attaching it to a prophet or anything else. The Truth shines in its own light though of course it may be expanded as happened with theory of evolution or classical physics of Newton.

Grendel wrote on Dec 19^th, 2008 at 3:36am:


Those commandments do make practical sense even without Moses as was proven by their inclusion(however edited to hide the origin) into atheistic "Code of Communism Builder" in USSR, which proofes my point.

yep and other terminology in another language...  but hey, we are just "dumb" infidels so that doesn't matter.