Hans Jansen

Who is Hans Jansen?

Johannes "Hans" J. G. Jansen is a retired scholar of contemporary Islam in the Netherlands.

Jansen is a graduate of the University of Amsterdam, his doctorate in Arabic is from the University of Leiden. He has worked in Egypt, where he was the Director of the Dutch Research Institute in Cairo. From 1983 he was an associate professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at Leiden University. Up to 2008, he was Houtsma Professor of Modern Islamic Thought at the University of Utrecht.

He is a regular newspaper columnist and frequent media commentator. He was a principal witness in the trial of Geert Wilders, during which a judge approached him during a dinner party and allegedly tried to convince him that the trial was justified. As a result, the judges were substituted and a retrial was ordered. The judge who was alleged to have attempted to influence him, Tom Schalken, subsequently retired from the bench.

Furthermore, he is currently placed in the electable number 4 candidate position of the Islam critic PVV list of Geert Wilders for the upcoming elections for Dutch representatives to the European Parliament.