| Ergun Caner | |
|---|---|
| Born | Ergun Michael Caner November 3, 1966 Stockholm, Sweden |
| Occupation | Professor of theology |
| Employer | Arlington Baptist College |
| Religion | Southern Baptist Convention |
| Spouse | Jill Morris (m. 1994–present) |
| Parents | Acar Martin Caner (father) Monica Inez Caner (mother) |
| Website | |
| erguncaner.com | |
Ergun Michael Caner (born 1966), also known as Ergun Mehmet Caner, is an evangelical minister. He was born in Sweden to a Muslim Turkish immigrant and a Swedish mother,and claimed to have been raised as a Sunni Muslim.[1] He immigrated with his family to the United States as a toddler. Later he became a Christian.[2]
He is a former professor of theology and church history, as well as a former dean at the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary and Graduate School of Liberty University. Caner has co-authored several books with his brother Emir, many of which are critical of Islam and have generated international controversy. In 2010 it emerged that he had made false claims about having been been raised as a Muslim and linked to Muslim terrorist groups as a young man. After assembling a panel to investigate the accusations, Liberty University chose not to renew Caner's contract as dean because of "factual statements that are self-contradictory."[3]
In May 2011 it was announced that he was appointed professor of theology and church history, as well as the Provost and Vice President of Academics at Arlington Baptist College.[4]
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Ergun Caner and his brother Erdem were born in Sweden,[5] the sons of a Muslim Turkish father and a Swedish mother. Conflicting versions exist about his mother's religion. Some sources claim that his mother Monica Inez was a Muslim.[1] She was an only child raised in Stockholm and educated all over Europe. By age 20, she had attended the Sorbonne in Paris. She had traveled the world.[5] Divorce papers of June 8, 1978 show Caner's parents litigated about the religious education of their sons.[1][6] Early in his career Caner claimed to have been born in Turkey, where he was "entrenched in Muslim extremism when he moved to the United States from Turkey as a teenager and found Jesus."[7] His parents immigrated to Ohio and Caner began frequenting a Baptist church in Columbus and in 1982 embraced Christianity.[8] His two brothers, mother and grandmother were Christians[1] but his father remained a Muslim;[9] and was the architect who built a mosque in Columbus.
Sahih al-Bukhari Vol. 9, Book 84, Number 57 says:
Narrated 'Ikrima: Some Zanadiqa (atheists) were brought to 'Ali and he burnt them. The news of this event reached Ibn 'Abbas who said, "If I had been in his place, I would not have burnt them, as Allah's Apostle forbade it, saying, 'Do not punish anybody with Allah's punishment (fire).' I would have killed them according to the statement of Allah's Apostle, 'Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.'"
According to Ergun's brother, Emir Caner, their father interpreted the above hadith as an allegory rather than literally. They claim that after he had consulted with his imam and other Islamic leaders, their father made them figuratively dead by disowning them.[10]
Caner studied at Criswell College in Dallas with his brother Emir who went on to teach at Truett-McConnell College, a Baptist school in Cleveland, Georgia,[11] and both attended Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in North Carolina for postgraduate work.[8]
In 2002, the brothers gained national notoriety after publishing Unveiling Islam, a critique of Islam;[8][9][12] IslamOnline's Ali Asadullah called it "a diatribe against Muslims and their faith."[13] The book gained modest success, selling 100,000 copies in a year.[14] In the years after the September 11 attacks, Caner became a well-known and popular speaker at evangelical schools and churches, helped by his charisma and conversion story,[7] and after teaching at Criswell College for two years became a popular professor at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.[7] In February 2005, Falwell announced that Caner was to become dean of the college's seminary,[15] a move criticized by Muslim groups.[8] Caner's charisma and his humorous and sometimes politically incorrect style of teaching, however, proved very popular among students, and enrollment at the seminary tripled.[7]
He ignited controversy largely due to the criticism and scrutiny of an alliance of Muslim and Christian bloggers [7] which found numerous errors in Caner's lectures and books and glaring discrepancies in his biography;[11] He had claimed to have been raised as a teenager in Turkey to become a Muslim extremist and only immigrated to the US in 1978. It was during these years that he claimed to have attended a Muslim extremist training center in Beirut. However, court records show that he had actually immigrated to the United States in 1969 at age 3.[7]
On April 25, 2005, he conducted two training sessions for the United States Marines in New River, North Carolina. During these sessions he was introduced as having moved to the United States from Turkey at the age of 14. He claimed that he did not know anything about America until he came to the country at age 14. He told the Marines that he did not learn English until after age 14. He said he watched American television in Turkey, but he had to watch it with Turkish captions.[16]
"I knew nothing about America until I came here when I was fourteen years old. Everything I knew about American culture, I learned through American television. Whatever they allowed into the Turkish region so that they could broadcast for free and so for me America was anything I saw on television that came from American television that was allowed by the censors. Andy Griffith was one of them and I fell in love with Andy Griffith. Didn’t understand what they were saying, there was the captions beneath. But I thought all of America was like Mayberry. I moved to Brooklyn, New York."[17]
He claimed that he had been educated (before coming to America) in madrassas in both Istanbul, Turkey and Cairo, Egypt.[18] The unedited videos of these sessions were obtained by a Freedom of Information Request in August 2010.[19]
Moreover, in a statement released on his own website and reproduced by the Southern Baptist Convention, Caner stated in February 2010, that he had actually been born in Sweden, and that possible errors in his "pronunciation of Arabic" as he's from a Turkish background and other matters were not intended to mislead but were bound to happen in two decades of ministry and hundreds of sermons.[20] The Associated Baptist Press reported in May 2010 that Liberty University backed Caner after having investigated the allegations of untruths,[21] but a few days later the university announced that it would continue investigating.[22] "Because of "factual statements that are self-contradictory", he was forced to step down from his position as dean in June 2010, though he was retained as a professor.[7]
September 24, 2010, Ergun Caner was the keynote speaker for the Twin City's 12th Annual Community Prayer Breakfast in Bristol, Virginia. When interviewed about the controversy, the chairman of the local prayer breakfast committee said that members were aware of the controversy, but the invitation had been issued before the controversy became apparent. He also noted that the Community Prayer Breakfast does not delve into the backgrounds of their motivation/inspiration speakers.[23] At the meeting, Caner claimed that he and his brother had seen the controversy coming for years. The bloggers were simply "frustrated people in their basements", he said. He claimed that it would take more than edited videos to take him down. All of his false statements explained by the fact that he has more than 200 hours of combined sermons which would yield random misstatements.[24]
He left LU in June 2011 to become Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs for the Arlington Baptist College.[25] The President of Arlington Baptist College, Dr. Dan Moody stated that Ergun Caner's controversy was in the past and the new Vice President had his full confidence. However, one anonymous faculty member told WFAA-TV: "I find it reprehensible that the leadership of the Arlington Baptist College would hire a man who is very clearly profiteering from the tragedy of September 11." [26]
During a 2005 Marine training session in New River, North Carolina, Ergun Caner taught that there were only three times in the history of Islam that all Shia, Sunni, and Sufi Muslims were united. The first was against the grandfather of Charlemagne, Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in AD 732. The second was in the Third Crusade under Saladin from AD 1189–1192. The third was the signing of Al Qaeda's second fatwa by Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri on February 23, 1998.[18] He also claimed that during 1998 all forms of Islam were united behind Osama Bin Laden,[18] a claim denied by mainstream scholars and news reports.[27]
On May 10, 2010, Liberty University announced that it would launch a formal inquiry into allegations of discrepancies in the claimed background of Ergun Caner, the Dean and President of the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary and Graduate School.[28][28][29][30] The move came in response to media allegations pointing to several factual discrepancies about Caner's supposed upbringing as a devout Sunni Muslim in Turkey, and his claims of debating several Muslim apologists.[31] The divorce records of Caner's parents show that his family moved to Ohio when he was 3 or 4, contradicting Caner's claim of living as a teenager in Turkey.[32] Ergun Caner has stated "I am thrilled that Liberty University is forming this committee, and I look forward to this entire process coming to a close."[33] On June 25, 2010, Liberty University removed Caner from his position as Dean of the seminary after finding "discrepancies related to the matters such as dates, names and places of residence." However, Liberty University did decide to retain Caner as a full time faculty member of the seminary for the 2010-2011 school year.[34] Liberty University released a statement on July 2, 2010, appointing Dr. Dan Mitchell as Interim Dean of the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary and Graduate School.[35] On August 25, 2010, Liberty University announced that co-founder of Liberty University, Dr. Elmer Towns would take over as Dean of the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary while maintaining his status as Dean of the B.R. Lakin School of Religion.