Hans Jansen

Johannes Juliaan Gijsbert "Hans" Jansen (17 November 1942 – 5 May 2015) was a Dutch politician, scholar of contemporary Islam and author.

Hans Jansen belonged to the "revisionists" in Islamic Studies, i.e. he fundamentally doubted the historicity of the Islamic traditions on early Islam which were written 150 to 200 years after Muhammad. Moreover, Jansen doubted the existence of Muhammad as a historical person.

Hans Jansen's parents were strict Calvinists. At the age of 17, Jansen began studying theology at the University of Amsterdam, yet changed the subject after one year to Arabic and Semitic languages. In 1966 he spent one year in Cairo in order to learn Arabic. Then he continued his studies at the University of Leiden where he made his Ph.D. in 1974.

Jansen taught at the universities of Groningen, Leiden and Amsterdam, and was director of the Dutch Research Institute in Cairo. Then he became associate professor at the University of Leiden. 2003-2008 he was Houtsma Professor of Modern Islamic Thought at the University of Utrecht.

In 1988 Jansen converted to Catholicism. He later said that he then thought also about a conversion to Islam: Islam has "a very attractive and powerful culture, a high culture, great beauty. An enormous suction effect." Jansen was married twice. His first wife Eefje van Santen was daughter of the communist politician Joop van Santen. With his second wife he had three children. One of his sons is a cabaret performer.

Jansen died of a cerebral infarction at the age of 72.

While busy with his university studies, Jansen was member of a leftist group and left the room in protest when somebody mentioned the word "Israel". The turning point of his opinion about Islam was the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981. Some of his friends experienced the event personally.

Jansen was friend to Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh. In newspaper articles, interviews and talk shows, he criticized Islam and how politics dealt with Islam. He participated in the international counter-jihad conferences in Brussels in 2007 and in 2012.