Ergun Caner was once the high-profile head of Liberty University’s seminary but was demoted in 2010 after bloggers and journalists poked holes in the dramatic Jihadi-to-Jesus life story Caner had peddled after 9-11. Arabic-speaking bloggers charged that he was actually speaking gibberish when lapsing into “Arabic.” In 2011 he left Liberty to become provost at Arlington Baptist College. And, as RWW reported earlier this year, he was invited to address the Family Research Council’s 2013 “Watchmen on the Walls” conference for pastors, a sign perhaps that he’d like to rebuild his public presence in the Religious Right.
Part of Caner’s rebuilding strategy seems to be cleansing the Internet of evidence that was used to reveal discrepancies between his actual life and the public persona he had created. According to Associated Baptist Press (ABP), Caner filed a federal lawsuit earlier this month suing Jonathan Autry and Jason Smathers, who had posted videos produced by Caner and claiming they violated his copyright.
Writes ABP’s Bob Allen:
The disputed videos were among a number of blog and media reports alleging inconsistencies, exaggeration and fabrication in Caner’s talks and writings claiming he was trained as a terrorist while growing up overseas, and that he intended to carry out a terrorist attack on the United States before his conversion to Christianity at age 18.
Contradictory legal documents indicated that in reality Caner grew up in an Ohio suburb where his family moved when he was 2, and was raised by a Lutheran mother after she and his Muslim father divorced.
Allen reports that Caner is asking the judge to forbid Autry and Smathers from posting any of his copyrighted videos, and is also seeking legal fees.
