Virginia Tech Shooter and "Ismail"
Fox News is reporting the following about the Virginia Tech shooter:
Sources told the Tribune that the words "ISMAIL AX" were also found written in red ink on the inside of one of Cho's arms.
The reference may be to the Biblical sacrifice of Abraham, in which God commands the patriarch to sacrifice his own son. Abraham begins to comply, but God intervenes at the last moment to save the boy. In the Jewish and Christian traditions, the son is Isaac, father of the Jewish people; in Islam, it is his older half-brother, Ismail (Ishmael in Hebrew).
Abraham uses a knife in most versions of the story, but some accounts have him wielding an ax.
A more obscure reference may be to a passage in the Koran referring to Abraham's destruction of pagan idols; in some accounts, he uses an ax to do so.
It took me about five seconds to google "Ismail Ax" and come up with this site, on IslamiCity.com, which is essentially a retelling of the story of Ibrahim (Abraham) from an Islamic perspective. Ismail is elsewhere (on Wikipedia) referred to as the father of the Arab people. I note too that Cho apparently entered the U.S. when his family emigrated through Detroit, Michigan. Now, there are a lot of places to come into America if you're coming from South Korea. Why exactly would Cho have decided to enter in a city that has the highest concentration of Arab-Americans? Were his family Muslims? Was he a Muslim convert?
It is far too early to call this a terrorist incident. But it is also far too early to start dismissing the incident as the work of a "crazed" gunman, as I expect the mainstream media will do. As the wags said after 9/11, why didn't someone "connect the dots"?
Sources told the Tribune that the words "ISMAIL AX" were also found written in red ink on the inside of one of Cho's arms.
The reference may be to the Biblical sacrifice of Abraham, in which God commands the patriarch to sacrifice his own son. Abraham begins to comply, but God intervenes at the last moment to save the boy. In the Jewish and Christian traditions, the son is Isaac, father of the Jewish people; in Islam, it is his older half-brother, Ismail (Ishmael in Hebrew).
Abraham uses a knife in most versions of the story, but some accounts have him wielding an ax.
A more obscure reference may be to a passage in the Koran referring to Abraham's destruction of pagan idols; in some accounts, he uses an ax to do so.
It took me about five seconds to google "Ismail Ax" and come up with this site, on IslamiCity.com, which is essentially a retelling of the story of Ibrahim (Abraham) from an Islamic perspective. Ismail is elsewhere (on Wikipedia) referred to as the father of the Arab people. I note too that Cho apparently entered the U.S. when his family emigrated through Detroit, Michigan. Now, there are a lot of places to come into America if you're coming from South Korea. Why exactly would Cho have decided to enter in a city that has the highest concentration of Arab-Americans? Were his family Muslims? Was he a Muslim convert?
It is far too early to call this a terrorist incident. But it is also far too early to start dismissing the incident as the work of a "crazed" gunman, as I expect the mainstream media will do. As the wags said after 9/11, why didn't someone "connect the dots"?
posted by PDB at 11:26 AM
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