Cologne, Germany - An Islamic theology professor in Germany who doubts the existence of the Prophet Mohammed won partial backing Thursday from another German scholar. Professor Sven Muhammad Kalisch, who trains imams, had upset the Muslim community with publications in which he said there was no proof that the Prophet was a historical person or that the Koran originated as Islam teaches.
Professor Gudrun Kraemer, who teaches Islamic studies at the Free University of Berlin, said Thursday on German public radio she agreed there was no indubitable historical evidence of the Prophet's existence.
Kalisch runs the Centre for Islamic Religious Studies (CRS) at the University of Muenster in northern Germany.
The four main Muslim groups in Germany last week withdrew their delegates from the CRS board of advisors in protest at Kalisch, saying they had no wish to gag him, but could no longer recommend him as a teacher to young Muslims learning theology.
In a joint statement in Cologne on Friday, the council of Muslim organizations said it was concerned at the "discrepancy between fundamentals of Islamic teaching and the published positions of the head of the CRS."
Kraemer said, "the problem is that he trains teachers of Islamic religion and that is a dilemma."
The "elegant solution" to the dispute would be to keep Kalisch as a professor but let another person take over the training of Islamic teachers, she said.
She said Kalisch was not unusual among Islamic scholars in demanding documentary proof that the Prophet had existed.
"All critical Islamic scholars know we have no original documents contemporary with the assumed lifetime of Mohammed," she said. "That is a majority view."
But it was also understandable that those who believed in Mohammed's existence as dogma would not want a person who doubted it to be training their teachers, she said.
An estimated 3.3 million people of Muslim background live in Germany, 1.8 million of them Turks.
