Ergun Caner and Arabic: A Review

Arabic Pronunciation and the Gospel of John

My name's James White, and a few weeks ago, well actually just last week, I posted on the blog a video by Mohammed Khan where he played various segments of Erdogan Kanner speaking Arabic or making claims about Arabic.

At the time, I said in my blog that I was going to ask my Arabic tutor to listen to the material and to interact with it, and that's what I've done. And so, Brother Issam, thank you very much for being here.

Now, I am not going to embarrass you by noting how bad I am in Arabic, because it's not your fault, actually. But I have very much appreciated Brother Issam's patience with me over the past about two years.

We haven't really been able to do anything for about six months very much, unfortunately, because I've been traveling around. But obviously, I have felt it important to attempt to learn the language to be able to utilize the resources the Lord has given to me and things like that.

And I can, if any of you have benefited over the past couple of years from the Islamic debates that I've done, the brother sitting to my right has been very much a part of that. And I'm truly thankful for what you've been able to help me with.

You are welcome. You are welcome. Now, you are from Syria, and so you grew up, and your mother language is? Arabic. Is Arabic. Is that pretty much the primary language in Syria? Ah, yes. Yeah. Okay. Now, I have on my computer here a series, actually, of, I think it's the Gospel of John, with you reading the Gospel of John in Arabic, which is helpful for my pronunciation and things like that.

So you've been, you're a Christian pastor. You went to? Southeastern. A Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary here in the United States. You also did schooling in Syria, did you not?

In Syria, yeah, and Lebanon, too. In Syria and Lebanon. Okay.

All right. And you've been here for how many years in the States now?

In the States, it was more than six years. More than six years now. Okay.

Reading the Bible Verse and Testing Arabic Pronunciation

Now, just a few moments ago, Issam and I worked through, watched all of Mohammed Khan's video. And what I've done is I have taken each of the segments and I've made individual recordings of each one. We're going to listen to each one.

But I recognize that there are critics out there that question every word that I say and everything that I do. And so I didn't mention this to Issam, but I took the time to put together the Arabic of my favorite Bible verse.

So to demonstrate that I'm not making anything up here, Issam, could you read for us what's on the screen and let us know what it says? Sure.

لأنكم قدمتم وحياتكم مستطرة مع المسيح في الله. Which says? لأنكم قدمتم وحياتكم مستطرة مع المسيح في الله. Colossians 33. What a wonderful text.

What a wonderful text. And notice you heard him say, you could hear Messiah in the language that he used there because they're obviously Arabic and Hebrew are Semitic languages and share many of the same roots with one another.

So there you saw, without any warning ahead of time, the gentleman's ability to read and translate the Arabic language. So with that having been said, not that I had any doubts, Issam and I have worked through, for example, I've mentioned many times Surah 4, verse 157.

I've probably bored the man to tears because so many times I've gone back to that text and said, well, what about this or what about this? Is it possible to look at it this way? But that's what you have to do if you want to attempt to demonstrate some kind of honesty in dealing with these issues.

Evaluating the First Arabic Clips

Now I'm going to play these texts, these sections, and basically just going to ask, can you make heads or tails out of anything that Dr. Cantor is saying here? And when we have an idea of what it is he's trying to say, if he doesn't say it correctly, I'll ask how you might say it.

I realize there's more than one way to say some of these things. But let's go in the same order as the actual presentation here. This was the same video, by the way, I've seen more of the video, where he claimed to have been born in Istanbul, Turkey.

We know that he was born in Sweden, which he's admitted in other places. But anyway, in that context, he said the following.

And the second thing I got to do was tell my papa I was a born-again Christian. Papa, it's been a lie. Believe in Jesus.

Hallelujah. Now that last thing, can you make any, I have any idea what he's saying at the end there?

No, I can't understand any meaning of this. Okay.

Now, there was something before that, though, that I could understand and you could understand as well. And it's something that is a part of his regular presentation. He goes home and tells his father, Isa bin Allah.

Now, as soon as I heard that, I went, that's Jesus, son of God. Correct? Isa bin Allah. Isa bin Allah. Isa, Ibn Allah. Yeah. Isa is the son of God. Right. But he keeps saying, it says, Jesus is God, which would simply be what?

Jesus is God, means Isa huwa Allah.

Isa huwa Allah, not bin Allah. He seems to be thinking bin is a verb rather than the word son. And I just, now, you know, I try to bend over backwards. Maybe someone is saying, well, if you believe Jesus is the son of God, then you're clearly believing he's truly deity or something like that.

But the fact is, Isa bin Allah means Jesus is the son of God. So we couldn't figure out what that particular one actually meant. This next one, however, is very interesting. I tried to find this inscription from the mosque on Google.

Every reference on Google that I could come up with was to Ergen Kaner. So if there was ever anything here, I don't know that we'll ever find it. But here is where he's talking about what is written on the wall of the mosque in Kabul.

Written on the wall of the mosque in Kabul, Afghanistan. Do not teach the women to read and write.

Now, how would you say, do not teach the women to read and write? That doesn't sound anything like what he said. No, not at all. No, nothing, nothing connected there. So if it was allegedly in Arabic, which is spoken in Afghanistan, I believe.

But there are also all sorts of other dialects and stuff in Afghanistan, are there not? Arabic, you mean? Not just of Arabic, but of... Urdu, maybe. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I have to wonder if possibly he's trying to come up with something.

But why would that... They wouldn't write on the wall of a mosque. I mean, you'd want to write in Arabic in an Islamic mosque, I would imagine. But maybe it's something other than Arabic. Whatever it is, it isn't Arabic.

That's for certain. Whatever it was that he was trying to say there. Now, here's the next one that was presented by Mohammed Khan.

For those of us who speak Arabic, you will listen to Al Jazeera and you will listen to Arafat and you'll listen to these men who will say... We will push you into... We will push the Jews into the Mediterranean.

And then they will turn around in English and say, we want peace. And you will listen to Arafat and you'll listen to these men who will say... We will push you into... We will push the Jews into the Mediterranean.

How do you say Mediterranean?

The whole statement is...

Yeah, you've got to say something about the Jews if you're going to talk about pushing the Jews into the Mediterranean. And the word Jews wasn't used in what he said. No, no, no. Not at all. Yeah. It should be said like...

It means the Mediterranean, you know, sea. So it doesn't have anything to do with this, you know.

But in that one, he specifically talked about listening to Al Jazeera. Now I know you've mentioned watching like the Arabic Broadcasting Network and other networks that's... Yeah, of course. Yeah.

While watching... Yeah. For example. I have an Arabic dish and I watch most of the Arabic channels. Right, right.

And so he says he's doing that and then speaks like that. It makes a person wonder just a little bit on that one. All right. Now here's one. I tried to find something in the Quran that was close to this, but well...

We have a verse in the Quran that says...

Allah has no son. Allah and Jehovah are not the same. But we have a verse in the Quran that says... Allah has no son.

Now saying Allah has no son isn't that difficult to do. No, it's very simple.

Allah laysa lahu walad. Allah laysa lahu walad.

Yeah, and that's the exact same root that is found in Ayah 3 of Surah Tal Iqlas.

Lam yalad wa lam yulad. Lam yalad wa lam yulad wa lam yakun lahu kufun ahad. Exactly. It's a well-known verse.

Now notice... I hope you don't mind, but I wanted to point this out because I think this is educational. You were raised as a Christian. You're not a former Muslim. Yeah, of course. Yet, you just quoted without difficulty Ayahs 3 and 4 of Surah Tal Iqlas.

Yeah, of course. And I think you can still quote pretty much all of Surah Al-Fatiha as well. Yeah, of course. I can say Al-Fatiha. How did you learn those? Is it because it is just so much a part of the culture?

You hear it? Yeah, yeah. It's just around you all the time. Yeah, all the time.

It's a part of the culture. You have to hear it. You already hear it if you are brought up in this culture. You will hear it so many times, you know. Right. And so it just becomes a part of the memory.

Yeah, yes. So if you like to say it... But even though you haven't... Sure, sure. Surah Al-Fatiha, yes. Yeah. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Ar-Rahman ar-Rahim.

One of the things that's in my headphones when I'm writing too, yes. And that's just traditional to elongate that one vowel, wa-la-da-leem, it's not part of the... You wouldn't normally say da-leem.

No. You say da-leem. But it's just part of the... And that's because it's part of the prayers. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Which you'd be hearing very regularly. That's one of the things that has bothered me about Ergen Kanner confusing the beginning of Surah Al-Fatiha with the Shahada, is that if you say these things from the time you're young to your teenage years and repeat them over and over and over again, even when you're an older man, you're not going to forget that kind of thing.

Of course. Yeah. That's what bothered me about that kind of stuff. All right. We are pressing on here and enjoying ourselves. All right. Here's the next one. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to do it in Arabic.

You guys don't know Arabic? Now, I'm going to stop this in just a moment. One of the things... Now, again, my brother is a minister, and he and I share a commitment to the sanctity of the pulpit and the necessity of preaching the whole counsel of God.

It's gotten him in trouble. It's gotten me in trouble, too. This next clip probably bothers me more than any of the rest of them because he's wearing a suit and he's standing, obviously, in front of a large audience, probably of pastors.

It looks like a convention someplace. And I would encourage you to look at the video because of the way he ends in a very... Well, the only way I can put it is a very arrogant pose, having just claimed to be able to relate the story of Abraham and Isaac to Muslims in the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem in Arabic in front of his students when what he actually ends up saying, as we will see, is not even understandable.

Here's what we're going to do. We're going to do it in Arabic.

You guys don't know Arabic? But what I'm going to do is I'm going to tell it because there's six Muslims who are stationed here all the way along who are listening to everything that is being said, and we're going to tell the story the right way.

And they lose their mind when they hear you say Abraham and Isaac.

How would you say, shut him up? Shut him up? Shut him up. It seems... Muhammad Khan interpreted this as having something to do with Ishmael and Isaac. I did not understand it that way. I understood him to be just now saying that the Muslims were yelling out, shut him up, and that that allegedly was how you say shut him up in Arabic.

Of somebody speaking and you have to shut him up?

Yeah, if someone was yelling, shut him up. Oh, yeah. There's probably different ways. Da 'hu yasmut. Da 'hu yasmut. Da 'hu yasmut. Yeah. Okay. That doesn't sound like anything he just said. Yeah, no, no.

You have no idea what he just said, even though that allegedly was Muslims at the Dome of the Rock speaking Arabic, and no one has any earthly idea what it was he actually was saying. All right, just a couple more here.

More Clips from the Muhammad Khan Video

Now this one, when even Muhammad Khan has to put a series of question marks, this was the one that sounds the most, to me, like someone on TBN trying to speak in tongues. This is the one that, well, here.

The tapes of them reading before they go and bomb? This is what they are reading.

I declare who I will send. I declare who I will send. Hmm. How would, especially if this was something that Allah was saying, as, I declare who I will send. How would you say that? Yeah.

I declare who I will send. Okay.

That doesn't sound like what he was saying. No, no. I have no earthly idea what he was saying. But, again, I suppose someone could argue, well, it's a language other than Arabic, but if this is a Muslim reading something about his own martyrdom, it's not going to be in anything but Arabic.

I mean, that just makes sense. Feel free.

You can say the same statement in different ways, but there is nothing, you know, I mean the other, you know, way of saying the same thing, it doesn't, you know... Make any sense. No, no. No, it didn't.

All right, just a couple more here. No one in the audience is going to be overly surprised that in the rest of them we don't find anything very different, but we're going to look at it anyways. This one, yeah, this one is...

Now in this one, I'm not going to have the portion here, but, well, let's go ahead and play it, and then I'll come back.

He went out to divorce. The man, all he has to do is face Mecca and begin the nikah. He disowns her three times, he says, I disown you, I divorce you, and you are divorced. You don't get any land, you get nothing.

Now Muhammad Khan, after this, pointed out what the real word for divorce is, which is... Talaq. Talaq. Talaq. Now, repeating anything three times fast, you can make it sound somewhat similar, but...

When somebody divorces his wife, he says, he repeats it in this way, Ante Talaq, Talaq, Talaq. Three times, of course. Right. Ante. Ante, you say, you are divorced, divorce, divorce. Three times. Three times.

All right. Which isn't quite what he said, but at least... Now, that's... Is that cultural in Arab countries?

Yeah, also, yeah. This, you know, this phrase or this word, when they repeat, even when they have a series episode or something, show on TV, they just act about divorcing, you know, a wife, they say the same thing.

So everybody knows that, you know, in Arabic, it's well-known, you know, word, Talaq, Talaq. Sometimes we... People, they joke with each other about, you know, divorce. Right. They say, you are Talaq, Talaq, Talaq.

Ante. Talaq, Talaq, Talaq. Now, the Christians don't allow that kind of divorce, do they? No, of course, yeah. Yeah. Had that thing called the Bible that gets in the way of that one, thankfully. All right, one more here, and this is the one from the alleged debate at the University of Chicago.

I understand the Arabic.

The Arabic here says, to tap her lightly, and I said, well, first off, yes, I do know the Arabic, and khesh means to smack with the open hand.

Khesh means to smack with the open hand. Now, is there a word khesh? No, no, no, I don't know this word. It's not an Arabic word. I don't know. I never heard this word before. Well, let me, I'm going to insert this so people can see it.

On the screen, we have the text of Surah 434 from the Qur 'an, which is the text under discussion, and the specific phraseology at the end, I'll highlight it and sort of blow it up so people can see it.

Tell us about what's on the screen here.

To smack a woman or to smack somebody, you say, but to smack the Surah in the text or the verses in the text, it says,.

So, wadrabu means to strike, and then huna is the plural pronoun, so referring to women, strike them, the feminine, feminine, feminine, feminine pronoun. I was able to, now I, as you'll testify, I already had this put together before you came here this evening, so I was able to find these things on my own in the text.

If I can find these things on my own in the text, other people can, certainly those who claim to be experts in the field should be able to look these things up, and you would think, if he really was with some scholar, once he said, well, kesh, they'd go, but it's wadrabu.

You would think that someone would immediately say, wait. I can't understand. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? Yeah, I don't understand it. Well, those were the references. I would imagine there are probably more out there, and people may be digging through old archive recordings and stuff.

There may be more of this to come out, but just from what you've seen here, and I know this sounds like a really stupid question, but I have been amazed at the lengths to which people will go to try to get around the factual documentation that has been presented about Ergen Kaner's stories, but do you have any reason from what you've seen to believe that Ergen Kaner is a native Arabic speaker?

Actually, from what I heard so far, I don't think he knows Arabic, so I never heard him pronouncing any Arabic word so far.

There are particular sounds that are special to Arabic. I remember sitting right over there with you a while back trying to learn the alphabet and the particular pronunciation. There are certain letters in the alphabet that are not normative for an English speaker.

For example, when I lecture on Islam, I have to make reference to Sharia. That sound. Remember, we chuckled a few times as you tried to get me to pronounce that letter. I don't hear any of the vowels or consonants that are unusual for English speakers appearing in anything that Ergen Kaner says.

That, to me, is the giveaway. When you're trying to make something up and you don't know the basics or something well-known in the language itself, you're not going to include them. There are so many things like that that struck me as I listened to this.

Anyway, I made the promise to you all that I was going to ask my Arabic tutor because I am but a student. Though, as a student, for example, we can talk about this now. It was last summer, because I remember it was very warm.

Father Zechariah was here in Phoenix. I went to hear him speak. I actually had the opportunity of speaking with him privately for a little while. I was absolutely blown away that he knew who I was and what I was doing.

That was exciting. It really was that he was aware of that. But, Esam was there with me. He preached in Arabic, which is very difficult for me to follow almost any of it. But, what I was able to do, which I found exciting, was they projected the songs that we sang in Arabic.

Esam will tell you I'm much better visually than I am speaking. That's just always been my orientation, is reading. I was able to follow and understand exactly what was being pronounced in the songs and things like that.

But again, then sitting there and trying to listen and trying to find theological terms, especially when he would go to the scriptures and he'd quote from a verse, then I'd be able to catch things. But then when you go off telling a story about something that happened someplace, I hopefully tuned back in when he got back to a biblical text.

But, that's just the process of learning the language. But, it's a beautiful language. I love the language and I'm looking forward to learning much more of it. But, it is not English in any way, shape, or form.

Of course. I mean, the script, the vocabulary, the pronunciation, very, very, very different.

It's different, yes. Very much so. Semitic language is different from, of course, the Indo-European family or the European languages. Very much so. Well, sir, thank you. Thank you very, very much.

I appreciate it. Thank you for watching. And, hopefully it will be useful to all of you. Thank you.