{"id":2288,"date":"2010-06-28T17:10:57","date_gmt":"2010-06-28T17:10:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2010\/06\/caner-sacked-as-seminary-dean.php"},"modified":"2010-06-28T17:10:57","modified_gmt":"2010-06-28T17:10:57","slug":"caner-sacked-as-seminary-dean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/06\/caner-sacked-as-seminary-dean","title":{"rendered":"Caner Sacked as Seminary Dean After Probe into Background"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) After a seven-week probe into whether seminary dean Ergun Caner exaggerated his dramatic conversion from militant Islam to evangelical Christianity, Liberty University announced Caner will remain on faculty, but no longer as dean.<br \/>\nThe investigation, prompted by a growing coalition of skeptical Muslim and Christian bloggers, concluded Caner, 43, had converted from Islam as a teenager, but had fabricated or embellished &#8220;matters such as dates, names and places of residence&#8221; in public statements.<br \/>\nCaner made a name for himself after the 9\/11 terror attacks by giving interviews and speeches about Islam and his conversion story. He and his brother Emir, who is president of Truett-McConnell College, a Baptist school in Georgia, co-authored a 2003 book, &#8220;Inside Islam: An Insider&#8217;s Look at Muslim Life and Beliefs.&#8221;<br \/>\nSince Caner became the first ex-Muslim to lead an evangelical seminary in 2005, enrollment at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary tripled during his tenure.<br \/>\nBut his critics, bolstered by a May 3 report in Christianity Today, found major contradictions in his claims of growing up in Turkey, rather than Ohio, and involvement in &#8220;Islamic youth jihad&#8221; to commit terrorism.<br \/>\n&#8220;Dr. Caner has cooperated with the board committee and has apologized for the discrepancies and misstatements that led to this review,&#8221; according to the university&#8217;s statement.<br \/>\nLiberty University, located in Lynchburg, Va., was founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell. Officials could not be reached Monday (June 28) to comment on who will become the school&#8217;s acting dean, and which subjects Caner will teach as a professor.<br \/>\n&#8212; Nicole Neroulias<br \/>\n,<em>Copyright 2010 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) After a seven-week probe into whether seminary dean Ergun Caner exaggerated his dramatic conversion from militant Islam to evangelical Christianity, Liberty University announced Caner will remain on faculty, but no longer as dean. The investigation, prompted by a growing coalition of skeptical Muslim and Christian bloggers, concluded Caner, 43, had converted from Islam as&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Caner Sacked as Seminary Dean After Probe into Background<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/06\/caner-sacked-as-seminary-dean\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Caner Sacked as Seminary Dean After Probe into Background\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"(RNS) After a seven-week probe into whether seminary dean Ergun Caner exaggerated his dramatic conversion from militant Islam to evangelical Christianity, Liberty University announced Caner will remain on faculty, but no longer as dean. The investigation, prompted by a growing coalition of skeptical Muslim and Christian bloggers, concluded Caner, 43, had converted from Islam as&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/06\/caner-sacked-as-seminary-dean\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-06-28T17:10:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"aroan\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Caner Sacked as Seminary Dean After Probe into Background","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/06\/caner-sacked-as-seminary-dean","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Caner Sacked as Seminary Dean After Probe into Background","og_description":"(RNS) After a seven-week probe into whether seminary dean Ergun Caner exaggerated his dramatic conversion from militant Islam to evangelical Christianity, Liberty University announced Caner will remain on faculty, but no longer as dean. The investigation, prompted by a growing coalition of skeptical Muslim and Christian bloggers, concluded Caner, 43, had converted from Islam as&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/06\/caner-sacked-as-seminary-dean","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2010-06-28T17:10:57+00:00","author":"aroan","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/06\/caner-sacked-as-seminary-dean","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/06\/caner-sacked-as-seminary-dean","name":"Caner Sacked as Seminary Dean After Probe into Background","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-06-28T17:10:57+00:00","dateModified":"2010-06-28T17:10:57+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/c6e65092118456e72064bc1332984cfc"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/06\/caner-sacked-as-seminary-dean#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/06\/caner-sacked-as-seminary-dean"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/06\/caner-sacked-as-seminary-dean#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Caner Sacked as Seminary Dean After Probe into Background"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/c6e65092118456e72064bc1332984cfc","name":"aroan","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/f35\/f3587d75a20cb88f1c76fd277ee82fc5x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/f35\/f3587d75a20cb88f1c76fd277ee82fc5x96.jpg","caption":"aroan"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/aroan"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}