Apparently the shooter had written the words "Ismail Ax" in red ink on himself...
What is Ismail Ax???
What is Ismail Ax???
Va Tech.. What is "Ismail Ax"
- Thread starter RIDE
- Start date
- Status
Hey Ride,
It's from the Koran...Ismail is Ibrahim's father...Ismail was a false idol maker who carved idols from wood with an ax. Ibrahim took the ax to the temple and chopped them down.
By Allah, he said, I shall plot a plan to destroy their idols. He knew that a big celebration was coming soon, where everybody would leave town for a big feast on the riverbank. After making sure that nobody was left in town, Ibrahim went towards the temple armed with an ax. Statues of all shapes and sizes were sitting there adorned with decorations. Plates of food were offered to them, but the food was untouched. "Well, why don't you eat? The food is getting cold." He said to the statues, joking; then with his ax he destroyed all the statues except one, the biggest of them. He hung the ax around its neck and left.
PS...know your enemy better than you know yourself.
mk
It's from the Koran...Ismail is Ibrahim's father...Ismail was a false idol maker who carved idols from wood with an ax. Ibrahim took the ax to the temple and chopped them down.
By Allah, he said, I shall plot a plan to destroy their idols. He knew that a big celebration was coming soon, where everybody would leave town for a big feast on the riverbank. After making sure that nobody was left in town, Ibrahim went towards the temple armed with an ax. Statues of all shapes and sizes were sitting there adorned with decorations. Plates of food were offered to them, but the food was untouched. "Well, why don't you eat? The food is getting cold." He said to the statues, joking; then with his ax he destroyed all the statues except one, the biggest of them. He hung the ax around its neck and left.
PS...know your enemy better than you know yourself.
mk
You are thinking Ishmael.. which may or may not be the same.. I'm very familiar with "Ismail"...
but what is "ax"... or more importantly.. what do they represent when used together???
but what is "ax"... or more importantly.. what do they represent when used together???
Oh boy, this is a whopper. Before they knew he was South Korean, people speculated "Islamic terror" on some parts of the web, despite the fact that not a single schoolhouse massacre has been perpertrated here by Bin Ladenite psychos.
Abraham's father is named Azar. The word is "axe", not "ax". Scrawled writing on the arm of a nut, using a name that exists in spanish...with an incomplete two-lettered scrawling next to it?
Seriously, the paranoia is out of control. This kind of stretching makes connecting "gun culture" (whatever that means) look sane.
Abraham's father is named Azar. The word is "axe", not "ax". Scrawled writing on the arm of a nut, using a name that exists in spanish...with an incomplete two-lettered scrawling next to it?
Seriously, the paranoia is out of control. This kind of stretching makes connecting "gun culture" (whatever that means) look sane.
Corriea said:
I guess it depends on what you consider "reputable"
LINK: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...0,1137509.story?coll=chi-homepagepromo440-fea
Zundfolge
Member
Actually you have that backward.
Ismail is an alternative spelling of Ishmael.
Ibrahim is an alternative spelling of Abraham.
In the Jewish/Christian story Abraham smashed the idols in the temple, I believe either in the Koran (or at least in popular Islamic retelling of the story) Abraham (Ibrahim) used an ax to smash the idols (I don't recall the exact weapon used being spelled out in the Bible).
Ismail (Ishmael) is the son of Abraham by his wife's handmaiden Hagar. In Judaism and Christianity we see Ishmael as the bastard son of Abraham and a symbol of his lapse in faith and his decedents a "thorn in the side of Israel", but Islam sees Ishmael as the true heir to God's promise to Abraham.
So based on the other snippets we've heard from this kids note, it sounds like he could have seen himself as "smashing the idols" or "smiting the wicked" or some such thing (as the Ax of Ishmael).
Now just because some kook scribbles something vaguely religious on his arm before massacering a bunch of people doesn't mean he was put up to it by said religion (nor even that he's a member).
That would be like calling Jules Winnfield a devout Christian because he quoted Ezekiel before killing people.
Both axe and ax are acceptable spellings of the wood cutting tool.
Yes, Fox also mentioned it earlier in the day.
It's too soon to make a judgement one way or another on the meaning of it though - there's a couple blogs out there also speculating on a literary connection - apparently there's some novel or another where the phrase appears as well. Given that he was an English major, a link to some obscure novel he may have come across in class makes at least as much sense as anything else.
At this point, I think we should just wait and see. He might have been a self-styled Jihadi nut, or he might just have been a garden-variety nut. We'll know soon enough, no reason to get worked up over it yet.
-K
(and thanks for the info Z.
)
It's too soon to make a judgement one way or another on the meaning of it though - there's a couple blogs out there also speculating on a literary connection - apparently there's some novel or another where the phrase appears as well. Given that he was an English major, a link to some obscure novel he may have come across in class makes at least as much sense as anything else.
At this point, I think we should just wait and see. He might have been a self-styled Jihadi nut, or he might just have been a garden-variety nut. We'll know soon enough, no reason to get worked up over it yet.
-K
(and thanks for the info Z.
)Back when the Murrah Building in OK City got bombed, the very first thing I heard from the TeeVee was "This has Middle East written all over it". When I heard that ATF had an office in the building, I figured it was domestic. Lo and behold, it was a domestic Lone White Nutjob.
(Turns out later, way later, that there was a shadowy, very shadowy Middle East connection.)
A disturbed young man of Korean extraction seems unlikely to have an terror jihadist connection.
Last edited:
In addition to the above referenced novel, also there is Fenimoore Cooper's story The Prairie featuring a settler called Ishmael Bush the owner of an axe and a gun. Both (according to bits of lit crit I've read in the last half hour) have deliberate imagery, the axe of both creative and destructive force.
He was an English major.
He was an English major.
The point I would like to make is that it's not the fact that he was Muslim, or ascribed to Islamic belief, so much as the fact that he's was crazy (I've heard that he was taking anti-depressants) and antisocial and that Islam has distinct portions of its philosophy which encourages antisocial, crazy people to commit genocidal acts against "freedom". Both this little fact (that he wrote it on his arms is an obvious symbolism) and the note he supposedly left mentioning his hatred for rich kids and things like 'debauchery' leads me to this conclusion.
It doesn't take total adherence to a philosophy to embrace certain portions of it.
Chalk it up to another case of SJS.
Sistema1927
Member
Huh?
I read the Bible at least once through each year, and I am having a hard time figuring out when Abraham was even in a temple, let alone smashed idols in one. Care to help me out with a reference?
Caimlas,
Imagine this logic applied to another criminal case: Andrea Yates.
"Since Christianity has one of its biggest heroes, abraham, sacrifice his son on God's command, clearly it must be said that Yates' murder of her kids was a Christian inspired act. She was just doing what the bible says to do: sacrifice your kids if God says so."
This whole connection smells of "violent gun culture" type connections. After all, 100 percent of shootings are committed by gun owners...I mean isn't the connection clear!?
Imagine this logic applied to another criminal case: Andrea Yates.
"Since Christianity has one of its biggest heroes, abraham, sacrifice his son on God's command, clearly it must be said that Yates' murder of her kids was a Christian inspired act. She was just doing what the bible says to do: sacrifice your kids if God says so."
This whole connection smells of "violent gun culture" type connections. After all, 100 percent of shootings are committed by gun owners...I mean isn't the connection clear!?
Sorry Cailas, I gotta disagree to.
There's just not enough evidence to hang the "Jihadi" label on the guy, even in the limited form you're talking about. If and when the remainder of the note is released, it may be possible to make that call.
I don't think it is now.
Wait and see.
-K
There's just not enough evidence to hang the "Jihadi" label on the guy, even in the limited form you're talking about. If and when the remainder of the note is released, it may be possible to make that call.
I don't think it is now.
Wait and see.
-K
Sistema - I've never seen it, either. I think the Jewish folk have a few books in their Holy Book (Torah? Or is that just Moses' books?) that the Christian Bible doesn't have, so it could be there. Apparently in the Koran, according to Zundfolge.
Ismail=Ishmael? Moby Dick had an Ishmael, IIRC. Don't remember an axe, but I haven't read it in half a decade.
Ismail=Ishmael? Moby Dick had an Ishmael, IIRC. Don't remember an axe, but I haven't read it in half a decade.
Sistema1927
Member
That was my point. If it is in the Koran it could hardly be called part of the Jewish/Christian tradition.
Guys, he was a English major, a literate man. This is a Cooper reference as was pointed out earlier.
If he did do this in the name of jihad then he wouldn't hide it with bookish references, he would have been right up front with it.
If he did do this in the name of jihad then he wouldn't hide it with bookish references, he would have been right up front with it.
http://www.oldandsold.com/articles25/cooper-8.shtml
This, the fifth and final volume of the Leather-Stocking Tales, closes the career of Natty Bumppo, variously known in the other novels as Hawk Eye, Deerslayer, Pathfinder, etc. His bravery, firmness of character, and woodland skill make him a type of the hardy pioneers that pushed westward the reign of civilization. In the present volume he is represented as a trapper of the prairies of the great West. Driven by the sound of the ax from his beloved forests, he seeks a refuge on the denuded plains that stretch to the Rocky Mountains, and passes there the closing years of his life.
http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/articles/other/1969other-goetzmann.html
Bush's important role, however, is not that of kidnapper. He is Ishmael the outcast and outlawed wanderer. He is a kind of gypsy Caliban of brutish and powerful strength doomed to suffer in his own private dungeon of ignorance, unless he learns. We first see him crashing across the prairie in one of Cooper's best descriptive passages:
He was a tall, sunburnt man, past the middle age, of a dull countenance and listless manner. His frame appeared loose and flexible; but it was vast, and in reality of prodigious power. It was only at moments, however, as some slight impediment imposed itself to his {83} loitering progress, that his person, which in its ordinary gait seemed so lounging and nerveless, displayed any of those energies which lay latent in his system, like the slumbering and unwieldy, but terrible, strength of the elephant.
This, the fifth and final volume of the Leather-Stocking Tales, closes the career of Natty Bumppo, variously known in the other novels as Hawk Eye, Deerslayer, Pathfinder, etc. His bravery, firmness of character, and woodland skill make him a type of the hardy pioneers that pushed westward the reign of civilization. In the present volume he is represented as a trapper of the prairies of the great West. Driven by the sound of the ax from his beloved forests, he seeks a refuge on the denuded plains that stretch to the Rocky Mountains, and passes there the closing years of his life.
http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/articles/other/1969other-goetzmann.html
Bush's important role, however, is not that of kidnapper. He is Ishmael the outcast and outlawed wanderer. He is a kind of gypsy Caliban of brutish and powerful strength doomed to suffer in his own private dungeon of ignorance, unless he learns. We first see him crashing across the prairie in one of Cooper's best descriptive passages:
He was a tall, sunburnt man, past the middle age, of a dull countenance and listless manner. His frame appeared loose and flexible; but it was vast, and in reality of prodigious power. It was only at moments, however, as some slight impediment imposed itself to his {83} loitering progress, that his person, which in its ordinary gait seemed so lounging and nerveless, displayed any of those energies which lay latent in his system, like the slumbering and unwieldy, but terrible, strength of the elephant.
"Ismail Ax"
S.J.S. isn't looking so crazy anymore.
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/04/17/va_tech_mass_shootin.html
S.J.S. isn't looking so crazy anymore.
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/04/17/va_tech_mass_shootin.html
http://www.missionislam.com/comprel/ProphetIbrahim.htm
Yeah, I think is SJS is crazy. He was an English major hence the Cooper reference.
If he was a jihadi, then he would have been right up front with it and no hiding it with bookish analogies.
If he was a jihadi, then he would have been right up front with it and no hiding it with bookish analogies.
- Status
