My little fellowship includes a couple whose native tongue is Arabic. Rudy Jabouri was born in Baghdad. He has been following the Caner Scandal, and sent me some of this insights. I asked if I could share them with my readers and he agreed.
I wanted to let you guys know that southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq are my families ancestral home. My Grandfather (father side) was born in Aqrah, Iraq & my mother & all her family were born in Tinna, Iraq. They are all less than an hour from the Turkish border. I was born in Baghdad which is about 6 hours from Turkey. My wife & mother in law grew up in Baghdad but they also lived in Turkey for 3 years. My wife spoke Turkish fluently. My grandfather used to make regular trips back and forth from Tinna to Hakkair Turkey to sell & trade. I know this part of the world & the languages spoken there very well!
On Tur8infan blog today on AOMIN (Rebutting Norman Geisler regarding Dr. Ergun Caner) there were a few more errors that I’m not sure you guys caught.
1. around the 13:30 mark after he used derogatory terms to describe the middle-easter culture “Sand Nigger”, Caner said this “I don’t care what you call me, I’m Persian”. Persian? I thought you were Turkish? There are no Persains in Turkey, unless they immigrated there from Iran.
2. He also made reference to Turkish television being very Islamic restricted. THIS IS NOT TRUE!! Let me put it to you this way; if you ever visit Turkey, DO NOT LET YOUR CHILDREN WATCH IT! Their TV would make Hugh Heffner blush. American TV is FAR MORE decent then Turkish TV! My wife was telling me about a game show that was very popular in Turkey that put the loser being left totally naked on your screen. Turkey is the most liberal Islamic country. The majority of Turkish culture is more influenced by Western Europe than by Arab society.
3. He ridiculed Arab Christians for using the word Allah to describe God. The Arab word for God is Allah. This does not mean that Arab Christians worship the god of Islam. You can ask any Arab speaking Christian whether Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox they all use the word Allah when speaking the Arabic language. Now in the Assryian/Chaldean language, which are very similar to Aramaic & not Arabic they use the word Alla-ha. Now for Jesus they do differ sometimes, many Muslims will call him Issa & most Christians call him Yesuq & the Assyrian will use emsheha.
Natalie and I sat down and very carefully listened to his so call Arabic speaking. We tried to see if maybe he was using any of the other languages that might be native to the Turkish Iraq border & was confusing it with Arabic. I can tell you this, he is not speaking Arabic, Turkish, Kurdish, Assryian/Chaldean, or Syryani/Syryoyo which are all languages that are spoken in that area.
