A Very Concerned Reader, "The Romance of Alexander" and Musa Cerantonio of Australia: "I always knew that being proficient in Aramaic would one day prove useful."

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Apr 2, 2022 at 16:28

Dr. Pipes,

Could you please forward this post to your reader "A Very Concerned Reader."

Dear AVCR,

I want to share with you this very fascinating real story. A young man by the name of Musa Cerantonio. He is Italian-Australian who was foolish enough to convert to Islam at age 17. And as usual the outcome for those that convert to Islam: they either apostatize within 2 years or they become jihadists. And he elected to become a jihadist and a proponent of ISIS. To make a long story short, he ended in jail. And in jail he started reading the Qur'an and came across the story of Dhul-Qarnain (Alexander the Great). He realized that the story in the Qur'an does not correspond with what real historians tell us about the life of Alexander the Great. The author of this fable is not known. However, the Quranic version has many similarities to the Syriac versions of the fable that can be dated to 629-630 AD and might be dated to 6th century AD.

Check this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Romance

Mr. Cerantonio wandered if the source of the Syriac version is the Qur'an. And correctly he read the story in Syriac/Aramaic and came to the conclusion that the source of the story in the Qur'an is from the Syriac/Aramaic story.

Here is a link to a PDF file of the story in Syriac (remember that Syriac is middle Aramaic)

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23682632

Check also this link where you will find another link to the text in Syriac and it is PDF and a great review of the text

https://www.academia.edu/3644032/Syriac_Version_of_the_Alexander_Romance

And no you do not need to be fluent in Syriac/Aramaic. However, if you need a very good Syriac dictionary you can google: Manna Syriac/Arabic dictionary

https://archive.org/details/SyriacArabicDictionary

The good news? He left Islam!

Here is a link to his story in The Atlantic:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/deprogramming-isis-supporters-jihadi-extremism/629433/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

PS: Here is a link to a comparison of the Syriac text to a Pahlavi text of the story which could very well be the source of the story

https://brill.com/view/book/9789004359932/BP000023.xml

Check also Jacob of Serugh's copy of the story.

And to paraphrase the old saying: You cannot fool all the people all the time.

Musa Cerantonio- I always knew that being proficient in Aramaic would one day prove useful.

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