Ergun Caner's Lies Catch Up To Him, Part 1

AKA His Father Did Not Build The Islamic Center In Columbus, Ohio.

It was pointed out to me that Ergun has updated his Q & A Sessions for July, 2009. Here is the first question:

QUESTION: WERE YOU REALLY A MUSLIM? I SAW SOME GUY ON YOUTUBE WHO SWEARS YOU WERE NEVER ONE.

ANSWER:

Ah yes, one of my “fans.” We do have a number of them. I have heard about some of them, and usually I laugh these things off. With a name like mine, you would think someone would recognize I am Turkish! And, since Emir and I write under our real names (emircaner.com), we have had every possible malicious attack thrown at us. So, this is no bother. Plus, we have addressed this in virtually every book we have written. Enjoy!

1. My name is Ergun Caner. I was born and raised a Sunni Muslim.
2. Our father, Acar Mehmet Caner had three sons: Ergun (me), Erdem, and Emir.
3. We were raised Muslim. We were trained Muslim. Our father was very devout, and when we moved to America, our father helped BUILD the Mosque in Columbus, Ohio. We were there from day one, when the Islamic Foundation was meeting on the campus of Ohio State University, to the building of the Islamic Foundation on Broad Street.
4. I doubt if there was anyone who served in more capacities, or more faithfully, than our father. He did the call to prayer, he taught classes, he did everything.
5. Until our conversions, all three boys were devout and faithful Muslims. We read our Qur’an, we fasted during Ramadan, we ate by halal, we prayed five times a day, etc.

I'm excerpting the entire first half of the question (the second half is a net full of red herring that doesn't deserve comment) because I want everyone to see that I am NOT taking anything out of context.

In fact, here's a picture of the question and the response as of today, Aug. 1, 2009. I'm doing this because Ergun has a really bad habit of changing what he said after his errors have been exposed.

(Click to make larger.)

For the purposes of this dissection, one paragraph is absolutely critical, and it is, on the basis of the evidence, flat-out false. That paragraph is:

We were raised Muslim. We were trained Muslim. Our father was very devout, and when we moved to America, our father helped BUILD the Mosque in Columbus, Ohio. We were there from day one, when the Islamic Foundation was meeting on the campus of Ohio State University, to the building of the Islamic Foundation on Broad Street.

And yes, apparently Acar Caner was there from the beginning. Here's a picture that used to be on Ergun's Facebook, but has since been removed:

The caption reads: "My father built the Islamic Center on Broad Street in Columbus, Ohio" and came from the album "Back in the Day (From Muslim to Christian Minister" by Ergun Mehmet Caner. (Thanks to the person who provided this to me.)

Here's another copy of the same picture, without the caption:

However, even if we didn't have this picture and its rather damning caption, we do have Ergun's own words: our father helped BUILD the Mosque in Columbus, Ohio.

Let me proceed to very simply demolish that notion right here and now.

There is still an Islamic Center located at 1428 E Broad St Columbus, OH 43205. It's a mile or two southeast of the campus of Ohio State University. Here's a Google Street View of the location today:


It's Street View, so it's kind of crummy, but you can tell that it's the same building.

Now, let's find out more about the building. For that, we'll first go to the Franklin County Treasurer's web site. I've already done this and found out that the parcel number is 010-055927-00. Here's the record from the County Treasurer. You can see that the property is owned by the North American Islamic Trust, Inc., and, as is customary here in the United States, it is tax exempt as a place of worship.

(Click to make larger)

Armed with the all-important parcel number, I can now go off to the Franklin County Auditor, which is the government agency that assesses how much a property is worth. These sites can also provide information about how big the piece of property is, the square footage of any buildings, how many rooms are in the building and, most important for our purposes here, when the building was built.

Here's the record for 1428 E. Broad St., Columbus, OH, the building that Ergun Mehmet Caner says his father built:

(Please, click on this one!)

Under "Building Data" in the middle of the far-right column, we find this information:

Year Built	1903	Total Sq Footage	4,608
Total Rooms	20	Bedrooms	0
Full Baths	1	Half Baths	5

The most important piece of information for what we're doing here is the first one:

Year Built: 1903

Unless Ergun's father was born about 1875 or thereabouts, he didn't build this mosque. Rather, this masjid (which is the transliterated Arabic for "mosque") was a repurposed old mansion. It's possible that maybe Ergun's father might have been involved in renovating the building for use as a masjid, but I can state the following confidently:

Acar Caner did not build the mosque [masjid] located on Broad St. in Columbus.

I'd also like to suggest that Ergun's misleading his mainly Christian readership by saying his father did the call to prayer. They might think that he was the Imam or person who led congregational prayer. The call to prayer (which is important in Islam) is given before congregational prayer and it's to assemble people together for that prayer. But Ergun isn't clear on that at all and given how his readers already have warped ideas of Islam, Muslims, etc., I can't help but believe there was some deliberation about this.

However, I KNOW there was some deliberate strewing of red herrings regarding his academic degrees. I will address those tomorrow.