A Dutch reader named Roelf-Jan Wentholt (who tipped us to the video that Vlad subtitled last night) sends the following eulogy for the late Prof. Hans Jansen. Mr. Wentholt says, “I was a friend of Hans’. Hans had many, many friends, because he was such a fine person.”
After a valiant struggle, while being full of humour and tenderness, surrounded by his family and his loved ones, Professor Dr. Johannes J. G. (Hans) Jansen passed away peacefully on May 5.
Amsterdam, November 17, 1942 — Zwolle, May 5, 2015
Obituary for Prof. Emeritus Hans Jansen, Dutch Arabist
Hans Jansen was an eminent scholar with a worldwide reputation for his research into Islamic doctrine and thinking. As befits a scholar he was not satisfied with fairy tales. So Hans continued to work to help break down the myth of Multiculturalism, and in particular of the peaceful pretense of Islam.
Hans discovered such a grave calendrical error in the work of Muhammad’s biographer Ibn Ishaq that it is justifiable to conclude that the whole story was written with the sole intention of creating the figure of Mohammed, to depict this figure as the messenger of God and final prophet.
Hans was part of the Inarah conference, organized by equally worthy scholars who regularly meet in Germany to investigate how Islam emerged. During breaks these scholars would converse in Latin or Greek or Arabic or Aramaic or Hebrew, but generally in German. Hans visibly enjoyed this company in which no one was hindered by the strict boundaries of political correctness. This article by Hans is a result of those activities.
All his life Hans remained amazed by the refusal of seemingly rational people to take notice of the findings of himself and his colleagues.
Hans wanted to reach as many people as possible; he was definitely not the professorial recluse. He lived to publish and to inform. His writing style was lucid and transparent. None of his texts was exclusive or elitist.
Hans’s books and articles were widely read. The series of articles published by Hans for the influential Dutch site Geen Stijl (no style) showed Hans in his best form as the knowledgeable professor who writes in an elegant, amusing and funny tone to reach a large audience of readers.
Hans was often asked to appear on television shows but when he repeatedly met the wall of silly politically correct deafness, he stopped accepting these invitations. If a request came to him, from then on, he would respond to the applicant with the words: “My father and mother do not allow me to appear on television any longer.”
When Hans was quite unexpectedly invited to stand as a candidate for the Dutch Freedom Party for the European Union Parliament, it was impressive to see how he, while already advanced in years, accepted with enormous energy this turn of career. I am forever grateful for him to have made this sacrifice so that the voice of reason would also be heard in the European Parliament. His last contribution in the plenary session of the EU Parliament, can be seen here (in Dutch, English transcript below the video):
Hans said in the one minute he was allowed to speak:
“In the year 832 the Caliph of Bagdad visited Egypt and ordered the large pyramid of Gizeh to be destroyed. The effort of his soldiers showed hardly any result after several months of labor. The attempt to demolish this pre-Islamic monument was therefore stopped. This illustrates how the Islam strives to erase all memory of what went before it. This destruction of the past is what Islam has always strived for; it is not a new occurrence what we now see in Northern Iraq and Northern Syria with IS. With Islamic genocide comes the denial of the genocide, with the Jihad comes the endeavor to erase everything that might remind us of the victims of the Jihad.
“It is for this reason that I ask the European Commission and all who read or hear this, to not only commemorate the victims of the Armenian Genocide but also to work very hard to save Europe from this religion. Because the enemy is already within our borders.”
Hans has published dozens of books, of which three were published in English and one in German. At the bottom of this essay is a list of these books.
Hans would always end his correspondence with this line, a quotation from the Bible, 1 Timothy 6:12: Fight the good fight.
We will.
We will miss Hans immensely.
I imagine a lot of Muslims will get all bent out of shape about this, but the fact is that if the Muslim population as a whole can’t come to terms with this then nothing will ever improve in the Muslim world, just like nothing will ever improve for an alcoholic who can’t admit that he’s an alcoholic.
I was trying to buy his book about Mohammad but is in German!, Can any Editorial translate in English !
Sometimes one can find people who might be interested.
For example, the man who wrote a book on our sidebar, “What The Modern Martyr Should Know” corresponded with me when I lamented the awkward & unserious nature of the book’s subtitle.
The man is a German scholar and wryly admitted he hadn’t liked it much either but after he’d written it (and he was the one to translate it into English, I think), the publishers kind of overrode his doubts about that subtitle so he was stuck with it. IMHO, the title of the book hurt his sales in English.
Anyway, I don’t know how to locate his address anymore, but Germans might know who he is and if he could find a publisher willing to front the costs of translation. Sad to say, after an eminent person dies, sales of his works go up…thus, an immediate contact with one of Mr. Jensen’s publishers might be fruitful.
D- The translator of “Goodbye Muhammad” into “What the Modern Martyr Should Know” was “Vincent Fisher” (possibly also a ‘nym – I don’t know and don’t want to know; a person deserves his privacy, even a person who messes up a translation).
I don’t think Fisher was the same person as the original author. In fact, I got the impression that he hadn’t corresponded with the original author much. He made mistakes that the original author should have been able to correct: “Temple of Herodias” for “Herod”, for instance.
”Islamophobia is an invention of the Quran”
Dear Hans Jansen, requiescat in pace.