On September 15, 2005, Ergun Caner delivered two messages that were recorded and subsequently released by the U.S. Marine Corps in response to a Freedom of Information Act request (
see the videos here - and
more background here). The two videos are identified as "Base Theater" and "Officer's Club." All times are approximate in the following summary:
Base Theater
2:05 "Just as I only understood American culture by what I'd seen on television, so do too do most Iraqis who only get their television from controlled sources."
He came from Sweden when he was a toddler - so this is hardly surprising.
2:30 "I spend half my time debating in formats. Debating Muslim ulima - those are scholars - or debating imams, the pastors - I spend most of my time cutting through cliches."
Where is the evidence of that half of his life?
3:10 "My father had more than one wife at a time. As you know, the Koran says in Surah 4 you're allowed up to four wives. My father had three."
No, his father didn't have more than one wife at a time.
4:05 "Written on the wall of the mosque in Kabul: [gibberish that is apparently supposed to be Arabic] - do not teach the women to read and write."
It's a shame he has to resort to pretending to speak other languages.
4:15 "Democracy is like cr*p out of a bull, you cannot put it back in. Once you have allowed it free, it's there."
I realize that people use profane language and crude analogies, but it is disappointing to see it from a person who often fills pulpits.
5:55 "'Umm, excuse me, why are you always picking on Canada?' Cuz our Salvation Army could kick your *ss if you wanted us to."
Same comment as above about crude language.
6:15 "Please don't release this to Dr. Falwell, I will so get hammered over this."
This seems to acknowledge that the recording was not Caner's to control. It also seems to reflect Caner's recognition that he was not acting appropriately.
7:00 "I want you to look very carefully at my face, not because it's worth looking at, but this is the face of the declared enemy. I wasn't just a Muslim. My training in madrassa was three generations deep as a jihadeen. My father was a jihadeen, my grandfather was a mujihadeen. Welcome to my world."
The idea that Caner or his father (or his grandfather) was a jihadist is not supported by any evidence we've seen.
7:20 "Coming to America I did not wear jeans, pants and I wore keffiyah - I wore my robes."
Considering he was a toddler when he came ...
7:30 "We came in full gear."
That's not what the photographs of his father show. They always show him wearing normal Western clothes.
8:15 "... pants so tight you can see the seams split the mangina. Did you really think I was going to talk like a professor?"
This question actually elicited a loud "yes" from one leader in the crowd, while most of the crowd was audibly grossed out by the crude speech.
9:00 "My father was an architect, so we came here to build mosques as missionaries to you. Again, welcome to the face of the enemy."
There does not seem to be any evidence supporting this claim that his father was an architect or that he came to America to build mosques or as "missionaries" to non-Muslims.
9:55 "My training in my madrassa in Istanbul, my training in my madrassa in Cairo, before we came to America, I was taught that you hated me."
He came from Sweden to the US as a toddler.
11:15 "Five pillars of Islam: abinadab, salat, zakat, swan, and haj."
The first pillar is the shahada - he often says "abinadab," but where he got that - who knows!
36:50 "Mohammed was a Qureshi tribe, I was a Kurdush tribe."
I would love to see any documentation showing that the Caner family were Kurds rather than Turks, as Caner usually claims.
41:40 "I have heard them, Muslims who were debating me in St. Louis, who said 'Sadat - he was a traitor, he shook hands with the unclean,' meaning he shook hands with a Jew."
I would love to see any documentation of this supposed debate in St. Louis.
43:00 "The Quran supposedly came to Mohammed on his 40th birthday."
No, he was supposedly 40 years old, but it was not supposedly on his birthday.
43:30 "But there is also a collection, called the Hadith. Now this is a term you will hear in Iraq often, because, there are four different collections of the Hadith, Al Bukhari's Hadith, the Hadith are not the sayings of Allah, they are the words and sayings and protocols of Mohammed."
It's interesting that he seems to know that there is more than one collection, and that Al Bukhari's is one, but there are not only four. There are, however, six major Sunni collections, which are collectively referred to as the
Kutub al-Sittah:
- Sahih Bukhari,
- Sahih Muslim,
- Sunan al-Sughra,
- Sunan Abu Dawood,
- Jami al-Tirmidhi
- Sunan ibn Majah,
There are also other collections, particularly those of other sects of Islam.
45:00 "Hadith, volume 9, number 57"
Even after tipping his hat to the fact that there are multiple collections of hadith, Caner goes back to citing hadith without identifying the collection.
49:45 "Where you stand in the square and you declare yourself, I am now to be a jihadeen."
I mostly provide this to show that when Caner says "jihadeen" he does mean jihadi.
50:10 "When I came to America, in 1978, I ran into the first group I had ever - I had never seen a Nation of Islam person."
He came in the late 60's as a toddler. I'm sure there weren't any Nation of Islam people in Sweden at that time in any significant numbers.
51:20 "There is two nations of Islam. As I said, I didn't run into them until '78 when we came here to America. But there are two nations of Islam."
As noted above, he came in the late 60's.
56:00 "Whenever - in a debate with a Muslim - most recently Texas Tech University home of Bobby Knight - and in this genre in Lubbock, TX, the imam that I was debating, he said 'Islam is a religion of peace,' and I said, 'Wonderful - look into that camera' because it was being taped 'look into that camera declare that the jihad was not of Allah, call Muslims to lay down their arms.' And they cannot."
If it was being taped, then the tape hopefully exists. Where is it?
1:00:05 "We got stopped at the border, because my father had listed my mother as property. It's true. And the guy said, 'Your wife's not property,' and he said, 'of course she is.' And then he brought his 'sisters' - it's his other wives, it's how we bring our other wives into America, we call them our 'sister.' "
Caner's dad was not a polygamist.
1:02:10 "One of our celebrations is called Eid al-Fitr, it's at the end of Ramadan. It is the commemoration of Abrahim - Abraham - going to the top of Mt. Moriah to sacrifice his son."
No. The Eid that celebrates the near sacrifice of Abraham's son is Eid al-Adha, which is on the 10th day of the 12th month, as opposed to the 1st day of the 10th month (the date of the Eid al-Fitr).
1:07:00 "I taught - and our debate, which was subsequent to that - followed that - I taught that Michael Moore was an exponent of Hatriotism. Hatriotism: mock America, get applause. But the great thing is, as we've discovered, is that that doesn't represent that vast majority of Americans, it may represent some. But it doesn't represent the vast majority of Americans. Neither does it represent the vast majority of Muslims. And so my context in our debate, was that I said, 'Dude, you don't even speak for my people. Oh, you want us out of here, we're the occupying force. Listen, you fat pig! Do you understand that you have every right to make whatever movie you want. I love fantasy, but I don't look for hobbits underground. But your documentary is being purported to be real when it is much more fantasy than it is truth. 'Well, disprove it!' And I pointed out six things - six things that he taught that were wrong. One, he had a Muslim who was screaming in Arabic and had it - made it look like they were screaming against America, when in fact he was screaming against the Sunni. He was a Shia protesting the Sunni. Then he had another woman, who was weeping and crying and saying, 'look we're exporting America, yada yada yada' and in fact, she was a Christian woman in Iraq whose husband had been killed by the Muslims. And I said, 'Now, are you going to change those things in your movie?' 'Argh-argh-argh-argh' 'You fat pig.' You see, you understand, I like to argue. I get paid to debate. It doesn't bother me. What bothers me is when people swallow what he says hook, line, and sinker."
Caner wrote an article called "Hatriotism" (
link to article) against Michael Moore. But debate him? Where's the evidence of that? We have records of Caner being interviewed about the article - where is the record of this supposed debate? (
link to interview)
Officer's Club
7:10 "I have two half-sisters who are learning how to read for the first time in their lives"
Considering his dad died in 1999 and this was already 2005, I really doubt that Caner's half-sisters were just learning how to read.
8:00 "My full name is Ergun Michael Mehmet Giovanni Caner, Turkish, Sunni, mujihadeen, my father was mujihadeen, my grandfather was mujihadeen, Kurdish - Eastern Turk"
No, his full name is Ergun Michael Caner. He was not a "holy warrior" and there is no evidence his father or grandfather was, either. Also, it's very doubtful his family was Kurdish rather than Turkish, as he usually claimed.
8:30 "I get to speak in churches most of my life, or in debates. I debate Muslims and B'hai and Buddhists and Hindi and all types on university campuses. So like I said, I spend most of my time getting yelled at."
Speaking in churches, yes - but where are the records of these debates?
9:25 "I knew nothing about America until I came here when I was 14 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 through by the censors."
He came when he was 4 or less, not 14. And he was born in Sweden, so Turkish TV doesn't enter into it.
09:50 "Didn't understand what they were saying, there was the captions beneath."
Notice how he implies he can read Turkish.
10:05 "I watched Dukes of Hazzard. I wanted to marry Daisy Duke."
The Dukes of Hazzard didn't air until 1979.
11:05 "They were getting stomped like a preacher at a topless bar."
More of this uncouth speech.
11:20 "The last television show that I watched, I'm embarrassed to tell you. But for the sake of authenticity, I should tell you. I watched, every two weeks, for four hours: Georgia Championship Wrestling."
Notice the allegation of "authenticity"! Amazing.
15:00 "Her father is from Possum Kill, NC."
We can't find any record of such a place.
16:45 "My little half-breed child who ignores me in two languages."
Unless he means "English" and "Swedish," then this seems hard to believe.
20:35 "My madrassa in Istanbul, Turkey, my madrassa in Cairo, Egypt, there's no question what the doctrine of jihad was."
What madrassa did he ever go to in those countries? He grew up in the U.S.
20:55 "I was sworn to jihad, at the age of 9. Until I was 18 years old and I became a believer in Jesus Christ. I was sworn to jihad."
They swore him to jihad in Columbus, Ohio? If so, the government really should be investigating that group.
21:50 "You can see now that when I get into debates, I'm probably not their favorite candidate to debate. Some cracker, telling them that everything's going to be ok, maybe. But if you know the language, and you understand why they say what they say, and you understand the doctrines behind it ..."
Caner himself doesn't know the language and doesn't seem to have a very deep understanding of the doctrines.
23:40 "I was Sunni. What's interesting is that my parents were a mixed marriage, in that we were Kurdish as well, and my mother had Suffi."
His mother was Swedish with a Swedish Lutheran mother. She later became something of a hippy, apparently, but that's not the same as Suffi.
28:05 "I would sit in the mosque, in the masjid, and I still go to the mosque, because I will go in - I will not take the positions of prayer but I will go and listen to the masjid on jumiyata, I will hear the prayer, I will go hear the sermon. And it is just replete - it is replete with these teachings of [gibberish that is apparently supposed to sound like Arabic] - the Christian Crusaders are coming."
Notice how Caner is pretending to know and speak Arabic.
30:20 "I couldn't imagine when I went to my first church, I had never walked into a church before, and I'm 18 years old, I could not imagine that they were nice to me. And you've gotta picture me now, I'm walking into the church in full gear, in full keffiyah."
You'll have to imagine it, because he was apparently already off to Bible college when he turned 18.
40:05 "But you always see video of us now, saying, reading into the camera 'I am jihadeen,' or 'I am mujihadeen,' if you've made haj."
You have to love this apparent claim that the "mu" means that the person has gone on haj.
42:05 "I tell you these things because most of you have been bored to death with people lecturing about the five pillars of Islam, the six foundations of Islam, abinadab, salat, zakat, swan, haj, the halal and haram the dietary restrictions ..."
As noted above, "abinadab" is not one of the pillars - the one he missed is the shahada.
46:30 "I love asking that question to the Muslims when I debate them."
And when, exactly does he debate them?
49:45 "I often say, 'Freedom is cr*p out of a goose, because you can't put it back.'"
Note my comment above about his crude language.
53:30 "But I did work at 7-11. I worked at a 7-11. I was Apu. Yeah."
Elsewhere he says he did not.
54:15 "This guy comes up and he's trying to hook me up, trying to be my friend, trying to sell me something. and I said, (some gibberish twice) I'm not interested, I'm not interested."
Notice him again trying to suggest he speaks some middle-east language.
54:30 "The really tight, tight, tight - if there wasn't a female here, I would tell you how tight - tight tight jeans I could tell if he was Jewish, tight jeans. And I said, (gibberish) This is violation! This is violation! He said (more gibberish ending in America) Come on, I can be American!"
Note the crude selection of illustrations. Ironically, Muslims are also circumcised. And note the fake foreign language.
1:13:00 (Similar Michael Moore story to the one provided at the Base Theater at 1:07:00, although without any explicit debate claims.)
1:14:40 "'Raise your right hand, who's the president right now?' 'Ronald Reagan,' 'You're an American citizen.'"
Reagan became president January 20, 1981. I note this only because some people have claimed that Ergun gained U.S. citizenship in 1978.
UPDATE: Someone made a compilation of clips for many of the items quoted above:
-TurretinFan
