Ergun Caner in 2006: Just Misstatements?

I cannot be president. I came in 1978 when I was getting ready to go to college.

If you would have heard that it was an immigrant, some of us struggle because you see my brethren get up to speak and it's very difficult to follow our cadence.

I'm being very happy to be here. Thank you so much. I'm a

Yankee. I'm an urbanite. I live in the country now, but I have my entire life lived in the cement jungle.

I've been an inner city person. I learned English on Sesame Street, held back a year from school so that I could learn

English so I could follow along better. To lay aside some of your misconceptions, just in case,

I have never in my life ever driven a taxi, not once. I don't work at 7 -Eleven.

I don't own a basket full of snakes. I don't have a flying carpet. Do you know why?

Why am I able to joke like this? Because there is nothing. I am an equal opportunity offender. There is nothing off limits for me.

With the exception of this day and tomorrow, I am in a hostile crowd all the way for the next 17 days, and I like my life that way.

I go into state universities and community colleges. I invite cults onto our campus, and we debate all the time.

I do it because I believe Christianity has nothing to hide from the world. We have nothing to fear from philosophy, and that vain babblings sometimes need to be smacked down.

I hated you. I may be harsh, but as Dr.

Hayes told you, my madrasa, my training center, was in Beirut. Before I came to America, we came as missionaries to you.

My father was a muezzin, the one who does the prayer in the mosque. Five times a day, he would climb to the top of a minaret and begin,

Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, and he would do the call to prayer. He was also an architect, so we built mosques, and so we came to America.

It was 78. Ayatollah Khomeini had said, we will not stop till America is an

Islamic nation, and we came, and we continue to come. Anything I knew about Christianity, I learned through misconception and caricature.

I knew nothing about you, had never been in a church, had never been outside of the mosque.

Anything I knew about you, I learned either through television, hyperbole, gossip.

But I did know this. I hated you, and I thought you hated me. Muslims live in enclaves.

We travel together because this is necessary for us. It is necessary for us because we live differently, dress differently, look differently.

I was the oldest. My father brought his wives with him. Yes, polygamous Muslims do come to America. We call it the

Abraham lie. They say, this is my wife, and this is my sister, and everybody goes, aren't they so family -oriented?

Yeah. And we moved from Brooklyn, New York, near the

Verrazano Bridge, to Toledo, Ohio. Toledo, Ohio, to Columbus, Ohio, and it was there where my father built the mosque, working with the other

Muslims. Now, it's different than the way we do it here in America, and it's different than the way the church does it. You all know how we do it in the church when we're going to build something?

We get together, and we get a slogan. Somebody gets a slogan, and we gather the people together and show them a blueprint.

Then, somebody draws a thermometer, and we fill it in, but in Islam, it is the exact opposite.

There is no mosque that is built with inside money. All mosques are built with outside money, and so the money is provided.

The mosque is built, and then they say, it is built. Now, you must come, and so I, as a high school boy, moved to Gehenna, Ohio, and there in Gehenna, Ohio, as my father labored as an architect, as we began working on the mosque,

I was surrounded by Christians. At least, that's what I thought. It's why we roll out our prayer rugs in the high school bathroom and face

Mecca. It's the reason we live by the dietary restrictions of halal and haram.

It's the reason we fast during Ramadan until the Eid al -Fitr, until the end of the day when the sun sets, and iftar, and then we eat again.

Why? Because we are terrified. It's why there's no shortage of us willing to get on planes, because there is only one eternal assurance in Islam.

I am now approaching 75 Islamic debates. I have two more before the end of the semester, one with a

Shia, one with a Sufi, and I have never met one who has ever disputed this, ever.

There is only one absolute in Islam. Even Muhammad said he did not know where he was going to go when he died, but if you die as the martyr, in a declared fatwa, in an act of jihad, highest level of heaven.

There's no roller -skating in sand. Want to come to the pizza pig -out, the hot dog hog -out?

No. I will show them. I walked into the Stealth Road Missionary Baptist Church in Columbus, Ohio, in full gear, full geffya, and a

Quran. I went home.

I told my father, Abi, he's a

Messiah. Jesus is Messiah. My father faced Mecca, and prayed the prayer of disownment, and it was done.

It was the last I saw of my father. She got saved, and in the baptistry, took off her geffya, took off her door.

She's a church planter in Elephant Butte, New Mexico, because of one, because of one people, one tenacious people, and I live for apologetics.

Let me tell you what the last two weeks of my life have been. I got hit with oranges in a debate.

Yeah, don't awe. That's, it's sort of funny. You get hit with an orange, you're like, tomatoes are softer.

What are you, stupid? On Thursday night,

I debated two Mormons. Next Thursday, I'm debating the chaplain for the Metropolitan Community Church, the gay churches.

I love hostile crowds. I love that. You know what, if you ever hear

I leave Liberty University, you know where I would go? It ain't gonna be to go to seminary. I think we got it wrong.

We all think that if I can get to the seminary, it's the greatest thing in the world. No! I love the seminary, don't get me wrong, but I don't want to spend my whole day surrounded by Christians.