Call Him . . . Ismail's Ax?
By Nathan Nelson Posted in Breaking News — Comments (23) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
UPDATE: According to my apparently unreliable source, Bangkokker, The Washington Post is now reporting that the phrase was tattooed on Cho's arm and that it was actually spelled "Ismale Ax." That of course isn't Mr. Clyne's fault, it was widely reported that the correct spelling was "Ismail Ax." Mr. Clyne has also corrected himself and is now accurately reporting that the story in the Qur'an referred to Ibrahim's axe, not Ismail's axe - which means, essentially, that his theory and thus my own are no more plausible than anyone else's.
I apologize for the error; next time I will confirm what my source is reporting before reporting it myself. I should have checked to see that he was accurately reporting the story in the Qur'an, and for not doing so I apologize.
One question: What was the religion of Cho Seung-Hui, the shooter on the Virginia Tech campus?
There are several reasons that I ask this. The first is the subtle hint that this may not be an isolated incident. George Washington University went to a heightened state of alert yesterday, as (I suspect) did universities across the country. My own university is on a heightened state of alert, e-mailing students its policies on security and lockdown, asking the State Highway Patrol to drive around the campus, and even planning lockdown drills. Why all this if the Virginia Tech shootings were the actions of a lone gunman with personal grievances against other students? To me, this seems like the kind of response there would be to a terrorist attack and the possibility of more. Call me an alarmist, but after September 11, my feeling is that when things look fishy they probably are.
And then there's that list of grievances. Nobody knows what all of the grievances were yet, but the ones being reported in the media weren't the norm for a whacked out school shooter. The norm for such shooters is essentially: "Everybody was really mean to me, so they deserved to die." But some of this shooter's problems included "rich kids," "debauchery," and "deceitful charlatans." That just isn't normal, even by the standards of students who shoot their fellow students because they were picked on in gym class. Such a list of grievances smacks of religious extremism of some kind.
This brings me to my final point: the words written in red ink on the inside of one of Cho's arms, "Ismail Ax." This could have several meanings and theories are abounding, but one of the theories being proposed seems more plausible to me than the others. According to Mike Clyne (Bangkokker), the phrase may have its origins in the Qur'an. In the Qur'an, Ismail - the son of Ibrahim (Abraham) and the spiritual ancestor of the Muslims, similar to the role of Isaac in Judaism - destroys a bunch of Pagan idols with an ax.
Some are proposing that because Cho was an English major, this may instead have been a reference to Moby Dick or some other literary work. I find this unlikely. For one thing, the character in Moby Dick is Ishmael. That's the English way of spelling it. It's Ismail in the Arabic transliteration. Now, why would a South Korean immigrant choose to use the Arabic spelling instead of the English spelling if he was in fact referring to Moby Dick? That just doesn't make sense, as much as people might like it to. What makes sense is that he used the Arabic spelling because he was using it in an Arabic context. And what could that context have been? Well, perhaps he was Ismail's ax, cutting down the Pagans - the "rich kids" who were engaging in "debauchery" and who were being indoctrinated by "deceitful charlatans"? That sounds a lot more plausible than some obscure reference to Moby Dick.
I don't know if Cho was an Islamic extremist. Time will tell. What I do know is that his list of grievances as published so far isn't conventional even by the standards of extremely crazy people, that the way he spelled the name Ismail is Arabic and that its association with an ax has a clear context in the Qur'an, and that there's no reason for the nation's universities to go to a higher state of alert because of shootings by one gunman in Virginia who killed himself after killing so many others. Even if Cho was an Islamic extremist, there's currently no evidence that he was working with anyone. There's no evidence that this was, for example, a planned terrorist attack with more to follow. And yet it would be a good idea for all American students to be vigilant and to realize that in a post-September 11 world, even an incident that seems to be isolated could in fact be part of something broader. Students need to be watching out for threats to their safety and not assume that the killing stopped in Virginia.
The play he wrote that first tipped off teachers seems somewhat influenced by Catcher In The Rye. As do his complaints about the other students in his suicide note they only give us a couple lines of.
It's a bit odd he mentions "rich kids", "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans", and even mentioned John Lennon in his play.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0417071vtech1.html
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. - Douglas Adams
So I suspect his spelling of "Ismail" was entirely intentional.
I sincerely doubt this has anything to do with the Quran. My money says it was a gaming handle. Consider: young, loner, obsessed with violence, college kid...no slight intended to gamers, but I'd be surprised if he wasn't one, and probably a very intense one, or one who invested a great deal of self-esteem in such a part of his life.
And if he in fact dropped the final "e", it really sounds like a psuedo-hip gamer handle or cyberpunk manga character or other pop cultural reference.
I've explained exactly where my theory comes from. There is a very specific reference to the Islamic patriarch Ismail wielding an ax(e) to destroy Pagan idols in the Qur'an. The fact that Cho used this particular spelling instead of Ishmael gives us a clue that he did in fact get the inspiration for this name from some Arabic source, the most likely one being the Qur'an.
Can you explain how the name might tie into gaming? You make a good point about the dropping of the "e" - I've been thinking about that myself, since the usual English spelling of axe has an "e" - but I'm not convinced by what you say. It still seems to me that the reference is an Islamic one. Occam's Razor and all that.
Believe me, I'd rather believe that he was not an Islamic extremist. I've had the sneaking suspicion that he was since the story broke, but I've been hushing that suspicion in the back of my mind until I saw his unconventional list of grievances and this inscription that was on his arm. The grievance list screams religious extremism, and the inscription screams Islamic extremism. If you had asked me without telling me about this story what Ismail's Ax was, I would have guessed an Islamic terror organization.
Regards,
Nate Nelson
Reality Mugged Me
Gamer tags mean different things to different people, but I wouldn't be suprised to see it as a gamertag. And in case anyone is bored, look up ObiWanStevobi on xbox live.
Based on everything that has leaked out so far, I don't see anything that would make me think this guy really liked any religion. Haven't really seen anything suggesting he was much of a gamer either. To quote Chris Rock "What happened to crazy? Can't a person be crazy anymore?"
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. - Douglas Adams
wonder why that choice was made? In Arabic, too.
Has it struck anyone else how controlled and planned all this was. The timing of the killing suggests to me that he killed the two students in the dorm knowing that would pull the campus and town police away from his primary target and occupy their attention until well AFTER his shooting spree was well under way. This to me implies knowledge of police procedures I would not have expected in your average "crazy shooter". Again, at the engineering building the chaining of the door, the methodical approach to an execution style slaughter, maximum horror, maximum impact. Methodical and well planned almost as if he had trained a scenario and then executed it. And, his choice and utilization of weapons. Did he make a mistake in an initial purchase of a .22 semiauto pistol and then correct the mistake by his purchase of a 9mm? And the type and make of 9mm made his execution of the plan easier and much more deadly. The timing, the planning, the execution and the weapons he used all chosen for maximum deadliness and impact. Well thought out, well executed. 9/11 anyone?
of the game, something he'd undoubtedly done thousands of times before. What's really frightening is how many more just like him are out there, or more correctly, in there; in a bedroom or den or basement playing violent video games in every waking hour and having almost no connection with the rest of the human race.
In Vino Veritas
We don't even know if he has every played a video game in his life. If he did he only one of millions of people are gamers.
I have spent hundreds of hours just in the last year playing violent video games and I am no more a killer now then I was before I got an Xbox - just like half of all guys under 25.
What is really frighting is how many more just like you who are going to use video games as a scapegoat for you to punish for this tragedy. How many ignorant people like you will use this tragedy to try and shut down something because you don't understand it.
Like idoit Fred Thompson, who was already blaming video games at 3:00 on Monday, before we even knew the name of the killer, and while there were still students dying in hospitals.
We can nip this in the bud right now. If for no other reason than that hearing of this would make the killer smile, even in Hell.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
that I did not refer to anyone as "ignorant" nor an "idiot." I would posit that such an unmodulated emotional response might reflect on the socialization of someone who sings the praises of spending thousands of hours playing violent video games but who professes not to be a "killer."
In Vino Veritas
Personally, I don't think that video games were the problem here, although they may have been the flavoring. This has happened before: porn, roleplaying games, horror movies, pot, rock-and-roll, booze, opera...
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
just waiting to happen, who are in need of psychiatric help, because we enjoy a perfectly normal hobby you don't understand. Sorry if that makes me give an emotional response.
And I called Fred Thompson an idiot for using a pile still cooling bodies as a soap box to stand on. Now that I think of it, I can think of some words stronger than idiot.
I did 'posit' that someone, anyone who is so quick to blame video games for the shooting when there isn't even a shred of evidence that he was gamer must be completely ignorant to what gaming actually is, and who actually games. He certainly seemed to vent his anger and hate though playwriting, but yet you blame video games.
If you want some stronger anecdotal case, he was an English majors. Perhaps we need to keep a closer eye on people who read literature.
You will also note that I am not using anecdotal (or lack thereof) evidence to write off an entire hobby that enjoyed by millions.
Rock and Roll has got to go!!
Evil prevails only when good men do nothing.
when I was younger, the big issue that faced our communities was suicide...it happened a lot.
Seems the next level for the "troubled" is to take as many with you as you can....sometimes progress isn't all that good.
" in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."
Abe Lincoln
did not destroy any pagan idols with an ax. It was his father, Ibrahim who did that. If this was supposed to be a connection to Islam, then he would have written "Ibrahim Ax".
I think Ismail Ax refers to the memoir "A Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Beah. In his book, he describes child-soldiers in Sierra Leone who are deprogrammed. One such child escapes before his deprogramming, and one morning hacks his sister to death with an ax.
But hey, maybe not. I think that connection to Islam's Ismail is more tenuous. All Ismail did in the Quran is not get sacrificed by Ibrahim, and help his father found Mecca. 75% of his presence in the Quran is as an infant.
may not be in reference to the person Ismail? I posted upthread about a sect that broke away from shia who were called Ismail.
You’re a persistent cuss, pilgrim.
John Wayne to Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
apparently a schism developed around 5-7 generations from Muhammed. Ismail was the oldest son and heir, but he died before his father, as did his next brother. His youngest brother became an Iman, but Ismail's heirs started a secret chain of Imans. Ismail's branch (the Ismailis) is the largest main branch of Shia today.
I don't think there is any connection with the Hashshashin subsect.
No reports of a winding sheet, which would be normal for a Shia fanatic expecting to go to his death; and Islamist terrorists are hardly shy about announcing their motivations for mass murder. Cowards, yes: dissemblers, no.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
*Note the careful use of 'st' throughout.
Regards,
Nate Nelson
Reality Mugged Me
I was doing a story on the French presidential election for The HinzSight Report and came across it. You don't have to read French to get the picture:
Qui est Ismail Ax ?Laurent Suply
(lefigaro.fr). Publié le 18 avril 2007
Le web mondial échafaude des théories sur la signification des ces mots inscrits sur le bras du tireur de Virginia Tech.
Translation: Who is Ismail Ax. The worldwide web is heating up with theories concerning the significance of these words incribed on the arm of the Virginia Tech shooter.
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20070418.WWW000000339_mais_qui_est_...
http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ab1...
From this article I gather that Ismail refers to a break away sect of Muslims known to history as the Assassins.
more conjecture at this site:
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/04/17/va_tech_mass_shootin.html
You’re a persistent cuss, pilgrim.
John Wayne to Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance