Internet Abuzz Over Meaning Of 'Ismail Ax'

[rodeodance]

Source: AP




Apr 21, 2007 9:31 am US/Central
Internet Abuzz Over Meaning Of 'Ismail Ax'


(AP) RICHMOND, Va. It was reportedly scrawled in red ink on the arm of the Virginia Tech gunman after his shooting rampage that left him and 32 others dead. It was written on an overnight postage Seung-Hui Cho sent between the two shootings. And a variation of it appeared on a file contained in the package sent to NBC that included Cho's rambling, hate-filled video, incoherent written messages and photos.

While there's no clear explanation of its meaning, the Internet is abuzz with speculation about the meaning of the phrase "Ismail Ax" on Cho's arm, "A. Ishmael" on the package and "axishmiel" on the file.

Bloggers and online discussions offer theories on what the words might mean. They have created anagrams, cited poems, books and religious teachings, and floated the suggestion that the phrase was simply 23-year-old English major's name for himself.

The most prominent discussions involve references to Muslim religious texts in which God asks Abraham to slay his son Ishmael in order to prove his loyalty to him.
.......

Read more: http://wfrv.com/national/topstories_story_111103947.html

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

1. I know. Mellvile did it.

Call me Ishmael.

[idgiehkt]

22. That's what I'm thinking the reference is to

I mean, the kid was an English major.

[jwirr]

29. That actually makes sense. What kind of character/problem was

Melville's Ismael? Also my 15 year old grandson thinks he remembers that name from a video or internet game.

[rug]

33. Queequeg is behind it.

[merh]

2. maybe it was just the name of his alter ego, other personality

Was there any deep meaning or significance in the names of the other personalities that Sybil lived with?

Let's over analyze shit. :eyes:

[onehandle]

3. The Internets are always abuzz about something.

Meanwhile, if it hadn't have been so easy for this proven nut to get multiple guns...

[MADem]

8. Maybe HE didn't do it, Ishmael did!

I agree with the poster who said "Let's over-analyze shit!!"

[Henny Penny]

4. No mention of the pics???

and they probably could have debunked that one pretty quickly.

[shraby]

5. Isn't that also a story in the old testament of

the bible?

[Pab Sungenis]

14. In the Old Testament, it's Isaac, not Ishmael

That's one of the main divergences (and earliest divergences) between the Arab/Muslim belief and the Hebrew/Jewis belief. The Arabs saw Ishmael (their ancestor) as the rightful heir of Abraham and put him in the story. Hebrews saw Isaac (their ancestor) as the rightful heir and acted accordingly.

[papau]

15. The claim as to who was closer to God had Persians claiming Isaac so they'd be above Arabs!

Al-Masudi for example reports a Persian poet (902 CE) who boasted to be superior to the Arabs because of descent from Isaac.

I winder how the fight was settled, since the Koran is silent but most Muslims now insist the Jewish Bible is in error and Ishmael was the one in the story.

[sam sarrha]

28. it is also said that th Arabs made up their god to one up cause they descended from a slave girl cas...

our after Abraham knocked her up trying for a son..cause his wife was too old.. could his 80 something wife have faked pregnancy to avoid becoming #2 wife and a slave and her own slave.. and faking the birth by taking a newborn from another woman..and just claiming to be a favorite to god, thus making the linage from Abraham to Jesus a fallacy.. explaining why he didn't exhibit any schizophrenic prophet symptoms and being a total compassionate, peace and love kinda guy..

just considering the possibilities relative to the REAL WORLD.. not the faith based one

[papau]

31. What is real in the "real" world puzzled the Greeks - and with tied random action at a distance

continues to puzzle science and scientists.

Indeed Greek scientists dealt with questions of the soul.

In the science forum DUer JackRiddler http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=228x29713 reports on a Brit scientist that is upset about the big bang theory because that Nobel winning discovery that has two dozen peer reviewed experiments that verify its predictions, because it supports the idea of a God creator.

DUer JackRiddler goes on to praise that famous "atheist" Democritus- called in the post an "early rational secularist" (code as we know for "atheist") - despite there being no religious info on Democritus saying he was an atheist.

Indeed, Democritus is quoted by his father Euphodox as saying intelligence alone is not allowed to explain the organization of the world because one must give a place for the existence of a soul. Democritus conjectures about the soul were that it was composed of exceedingly fine and spherical atoma (now called atoms) - he also suggested it was the organization of the atoms that gave souls and thus matter their characteristics and not the atoms being greatly different in type - thus stary modern chemistry -smart folks those Greeks - of course he was discussing the soul that underlies the reality that we see - and we have raised up a statistical estimating procedure and its rules called quantum mechanics and we now claim to understand Democritus' "soul". I wonder if all those that make that claim really do understand the concept of a "soul".

Democritus also said that to have legitimate knowledge, one must get past data and into use of the intellect - saying this as he rejected Parmenides who denied the existence of motion, change, or the void - Parmenides saying that the existence of a thing implied that it could not have "come into being", because "nothing comes from nothing". So Democritus was into a creator God it seems, and Parmenides was not. JackRiddler could use some background reading.

I'd post the above facts as an answer to the assertions and conjectures that have no scientific basis that is Jack's thread in Science but the atheist mods that control the DU science forum have banned me for objecting to atheist posts (one much, much worse and more blatant) like Jacks's - guess that old "atheist control of DU via the mods" just has to be lived with as we enjoy the very real good that DU does.

But back to the assertions and conjectures that are likewise without historical, rather than lacking a scientific basis, that are in your post. The best that can be said to justify them is to say that it is a point of view of events recorded as history that have only one source - and that source had a world view of an Interventionist God, so if the Interventionist God is wrong, other reasons for the events described are needed, unless it is all a pack of lies.

So your soap opera of a "trying for a son..cause his wife was too old.. could his 80 something wife have faked pregnancy to avoid becoming #2 wife and a slave and her own slave.. and faking the birth by taking a newborn from another woman..and just claiming to be a favorite to god, thus making the linage from Abraham to Jesus a fallacy.. explaining why he didn't exhibit any schizophrenic prophet symptoms and being a total compassionate, peace and love kinda guy." is as valid as any other if you do not buy the "why" of the original writer.

Sorry about the above rant hitting me as I posted to you Sam - I know you are not trying to do anything other than to expose some thoughts you had. You just got in the middle of my memory of the mods that put promoting atheism over science on DU in the Science forum, and my thread yesterday in I/P on an article by the AP released yesterday Morning by the AP that was locked as "old news" because it was about our building a wall around the Sunni residents of Baghdad, which was old news, and the Sunni reaction, which was the new news.

Frustrated about mods is my current day theme, so I guess I should not post lest I get banned from ALL forums!

:-)

Have a great day. :-)

[nebenaube]

6. uh...

Isn't "God asks Abraham to slay his son Ishmael in order to prove his loyalty to him." in the old testement?

[splat]

13. And then there's Dylan...

Oh God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."

-- Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited

[idgiehkt]

23. PJ Harvey does a fantastic version of that song

Really heavy guitar. I like it better than the original.

[OnyxCollie]

7. It may be a reference to Ishmael, the gorilla in the story of the same name.

A student responds to an ad: "Teacher seeks pupil, must have an earnest desire to save the world." He finds Ishmael, a gorilla who can communicate telepathically.

From Wikipedia:

Before proceeding Ishmael lays some ground definitions for his student so they can be on the same page as they continue to discuss. He defines:

"Takers" as people often referred to as "civilized." Particularly, the culture born in an Agricultural Revolution that began about 10,000 years ago in the Near East; the culture of Ishmael's pupil

"Leavers" as people of all other cultures; sometimes referred to as "primitive."

A "story" as an interrelation between the gods, man, and the Earth, with a beginning, middle, and end.

To "enact" is to strive to make a story come true.

A "culture" as a people who are enacting a story

Ishmael proceeds to tease from his pupil the premises of the story being enacted by the Takers: that they are the pinnacle of evolution (or creation), that the world was made for man, and that man is here to conquer and rule the world. This rule is meant to bring about a paradise, as man increases his mastery of the world, however, he's always screwed it up because he is flawed. Man doesn't know how to live and never will because that knowledge is unobtainable. So, however hard he labors to save the world, he is just going to go on screwing it up.

Ishmael points out to his student that when the Takers decided there is something fundamentally wrong with humans, they took as evidence only their own culture's history- "They were looking at a half of one-percent of the evidence taken from a single culture-- Not a reasonable sample on which to base such a sweeping conclusion."

Ishmael says:

"There's nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact, in which they are the lords of the world, they will act as the lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now."

[kestrel91316]

9. Oh, for pete's sake. It's a two-ingredient "word salad". Trying to

decipher what Cho "meant" by it is about as helpful as reading the entrails of slaughtered fowl.

He was obsessed with those two words for some reason that TRULY doesn't matter. His mind was not working properly.

[ClintonTyree]

12. And just what have you got against readng the entrails of slaughtered...

fowl! :grr: There's always SOMEONE who's so high and mighty that completely discounts other people's religious practices.....awwwww.... forget it. I can't take this anywhere. :rofl: I'm just goofin' on 'ya. ;)

[kestrel91316]

26. ROFLMAO!

[valerief]

10. Maybe he meant to write Is Maalox, but spelled it wrong. Maybe

he was trying to say that the package's contents would make you shit!

[daleo]

11. He compared himself to Christ

And said he was being crucified. Doesn't this mean that Christianity is as much to blame for the murders as Islam is (not that either is - it just shows the absurdity of picking up on these points and exaggerating them).

"If you watch the video from the shooter, he very specifically talks about himself in Christian terms," Safi said, adding that Cho's references to Jesus Christ and being impaled upon a cross are not words "any Muslim would ever use.""

[jwirr]

30. You are right. Almost any person who feels oppressed can equate

themselves with the crucification idea.

[Dogmudgeon]

16. Maybe it's an ANAGRAM

Give that one a try.

--p!

[truthisfreedom]

24. What kind of anagram is spelled three different ways with different letters? HE WAS NUTS!

End of story. He didn't make any sense because he was off his rocker. Lid flipped. Bonkers. Full-blown batshit crazy. Screws loose. Totally freaked out.

[moondust]

17. A character

in some gruesome play bouncing around in his head.

[MilesColtrane]

18. Dissociative identity disorder

My guess is that "Ismail Ax" is an alter identity.

We know Cho was a Guns 'n Roses fan. He specifically cites the lyrics to "Welcome to the Jungle" in one of his rants.

Maybe his avenging alter ego identified with Axl Rose.
Some background on Axl Rose.

"William Rose (Axl's father) left the family when Axl was two years old, bringing the start of a troubled childhood for Axl who, as an adult, has claimed that repressed memories had revealed to him that his biological father, William Rose, had sexually abused him as a small child. His mother remarried when he was a small child, and changed Axl's name to William Bailey, using the last name of her new husband, L. Stephen Bailey, a man whom Rose has also stated physically abused him.<3>
Because of his turbulent upbringing and his mother's reluctance to leave the abusive Bailey, Rose is said to have issues with women. He claimed in a Rolling Stone interview in 1992 that during his childhood, he was made to believe that women and sexuality were evil and that due to the violent treatment of his mother by his stepfather he witnessed as an impressionable child, he had been led to think that domestic violence was the normal way of doing things.<4>


Charles Manson Song
In 1993, Guns N' Roses released The Spaghetti Incident?, an album of cover tunes. The album included a hidden track, "Look At Your Game, Girl”, a song that was written by Charles Manson, supposedly after Marilyn Manson had spoken to him about writing another song similarly inspired by Charles Manson, entitled "My Monkey".<5>"

Ismail Ax= I Am Axl +L S, or I Am Axl's +L

[Strelnikov_]

19. As Pres. Muffley said to Gen. Turgidson:

There's nothing to figure out, General Turgidson. This man is obviously a psychotic.

[Ian David]

20. Maybe he got it from the MySpace "What Is Your Mass Murderer Alter-Ego" Generator? n/t

[jumpoffdaplanet]

21. Ax can be used to refer to a guitar or bass

Has anyone looked into if this has anything to do with music?

[mconvente]

25. That story about Abraham isn't just in the Quran - It's in the Bible too

Actually, its the first story of the Bible - it's in Genesis.

[sam sarrha]

27. today only Schizophrenics hear voices from god to kill their children

it runs in families and later a related family member will also hear a god talk to them..

[papau]

34. Obama heard a voice from God - but not to kill anyone - Does he have a schizophrenic disorder? n/t

n/t

[brentspeak]

32. It has no other meaning other than he was psychotic

[donco6]

35. This is one of the most famous stories in the BIBLE.

The CHRISTIAN Bible. Why would they insinuate that this is an exclusively Muslim story? Why . . . to make people think Cho was Muslim of course!

How bloody transparent can they be?