According to Bible Belt Blogger he received an odd email from the American Family Association of Michigan today.
“The suspected gunman in the Virginia Tech shooting rampage, Cho Seung-Hui, was a troubled 23-year-old senior from South Korea who investigators believe left an invective-filled note in his dorm room, sources say. The note included a rambling list of grievances, according to sources. They said Cho also died with the words ‘Ismail Ax’ in red ink on one of his arms. …A note believed to have been written by Cho was found in his dorm room that railed against ‘rich kids,’ ‘debauchery’ and ‘deceitful charlatans’ on campus.
Ismail was the founder of Shiah Islam.
Frank points out:
1) Ismail was not the founder of Shiah Islam.
Abraham had a son named Ismail — a couple thousand years before the prophet Mohammed.2) Another Ismail ruled a Shi’a state in present-day Iran — several hundred years after the death of the prophet. (A third Ismail appears in a nineteenth-century Herman Melville novel.)
Religious texts
Imam Ali is the founder of Shi’a Islam.
The Koran makes mention of Ibrahim (Abraham) not Ismail:
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.
The Bible: Genesis 22:6 “Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife.” The Genesis account predates The Koran by ten centuries. (Ishmael means ‘God hears’) was Abraham’s second son by Hagar found in Genesis 16.
Korea is a multi religious society with a strong Confucian ethic. Buddhism is dominant, followed by Catholicism, Protestantism, Shamanism and Islam.
Film
In 2005 Ismail Merchant died. He was a film producer/director who was honored at the 2006 AX awards, an anime expo.
Films with ax in the title:
The AX Fight 1975
Generation Ax 1999
Ax ‘Em 2002
Literature
In James Fenimore Cooper’s “The Prairie,” Ishmael Bush is a settler attempting to escape from civilization. He starts out out across the prairie with two key tools, a gun and an axe. Each has a symbolic meaning. The axe - which can either kill or provide shelter - stands for both creation and destruction.
William S. Burrough and Robert Anton Wilson wrote about the ancient Ismailis.
One of the 87 Precinct short stories by Ed McBain is named Ax.
Popular culture
Ax is a WWE professional tag team wrestler. Ax is also a classical musician. AX is a kickboxing site. Ismail YX is a popular Turkish hip hop artist.
Ax is the name of a special forces group in the TV series Trinity Blood.
F-Zero AX is a video game. Ismail AX could be an online handle, a password.
The American Family Association could have taken 15 minutes and looked up a few books, films, games, sports, people and other references instead jumping to conclusions and giving out false information.
I could put together any conclusion I want to using any of the things I found in a very quick search. The Michigan Family Association certainly didn’t waste time making implications.
The Sydney Morning Herald looks at the web frenzy sparked by the search for the phrase and the quickness of popular culture searches online.
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What about Moby Dick’s famous opening line?
I was just waiting for some idiotic right-wingers to contort this into an anti-Islam thing.
ISMAIL AX
I used an Anagram generator to search for other combinations of the letters (http://www.mbhs.edu/~bconnell/cgi-bin/anagram.cgi).
One of these (#23 on the list) was LIMA AXIS.
I did a search for LIMA AXIS and found this reference:
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/jepoff/quizfest/team.html
A hit on VT.EDU??? I don’t know what this church quiz in reference too but thought I would mention it.
ISHMAELITES = FREEMASONS
33 VICTIMS = 33 SACRED NUMBER TO FREEMASONS
MK-ULTRA + MONARCH = FREEMASON PROJECTS TO TURN PEOPLE INTO ROBOT KILLERS - BRAINWASHING.
HIS ANTI-DEPRESSANTS WERE SPIKED - HE WAS THEN BRAINWASHED - HE WAS ‘PROGRAMMED’ TO DO THESE KILLINGS - HE WAS PROGRAMMED TO ‘SELF-DESTRUCT’ AFTERWARDS.
THE COPS SAT OUTSIDE FOR 2 HOURS DOING NOTHING.
ALL HELICOPTERS IN THAT AREA WERE GROUNDED.INCLUDING POLICE AND AIR-AMBULANCE.
THE ONLY CHOPPER YOU WOULD HAVE SEEN IN THE AIR IS A SMALL , BLACK ONE.
THAT BLACK CHOPPER CONTAINS A ‘DUAL-COIL , PULSE , ELECTRO-MAGNETIC DEVICE’ DESIGNED TO ALTER THE MINDS OF CERTAIN TARGET SUBJECTS.
ARMED INSURECTION IS REQUIRED.
YOU WILL BELIEVE NON OF THIS - BECAUSE THE TRUTH IS TOO SCARY.
i risk my life posting the truth - but you will never publish it.
Bob: Capital letters are considered shouting on blogs, do you know how to take your cap lock off?
Frei: Emails are not visible to readers. If you have a website, place it in the URL field when you want people to be able to check out your blog.
Moby Dick, first line: Call me Ishmael.
Judaism has generally viewed Ishmael as wicked but repentant, Islam regards Ishmael favorably. Bahai consider him a lesser prophet. The New Testament regards the story of Ishmael (Paul - Galatians) symbolizing the relationship between Judaism and Christianity.
Melvilles narrator symbolizes orphans, exiles, and social outcasts. Ishmael tells the reader that he has turned to the sea out of a feeling of alienation from human society. At times Ishmael takes a third person omniscient (detached) view in telling the story of his shipmates.
… “ismail ax = ismailax = is mai lax = is my luck” … written in red for a korean? that’s bad luck? …
Truly the most unusual comment thread I have ever read!
Different for sure.
It’s a puzzle I guess, something to unravel and try to make sense of.
ismail ax….hmm..here is what i think:
ismail= i smell
ax= death
x’s can represent things marked out or crossed out
maybe he just meant “i smell death”
I did a search on the lima axis anagram and found this engineering paper on Pressure Field along the Axis of an accelerating structure. Maybe he felt the pressure on him kept increasing and and increasing until he could no longer handle it.
I feel that ismail ax was symbolic to Cho. He felt like an outcast. And once on the other side of the mainstream of society and acceptable clicks it is hard to overcome that. Once you have been labelled by your peers, YOU are stuck with it. Yes, he was an English Major, but he was no scientist. Try not to read into everything too much. He wanted vengence. Plus, his psychological health was not in the greatest shape. Even if someone were to have acted on the warning signs it would not have helped. Cho would have told the shrink whatever they wanted to hear and probably did in past.
Ismail Ax was symbolic of the story with the statues. He symbolized the statues with rich people or whom ever his hatred was geared towards. What troubles me about Cho, he complained of the rich. HELLO! He was going to a University, one of his siblings went to Princeton. That costs money. So he wasn’t on the poor side. They should have sent him to community college and saved lives.
I don’t believe we should over think this. He had passion and direction but he lacked rational progression is his actions and notes. He simply stated where he was–never how he arrived there. He told us whom he hated but not how they had wronged him. He told us what he felt was necessary but not why he had reached that conclusion. He was completely on the surface and worked very hard to appear mysterious. I believe that the only reason this is so mysterious is that he was trying to make it mysterious for the sake of the image he thought he was portraying. His diatribes were intentionally cryptic and I believe that he was desperate to vindicate himself as above the mundane. [come on, who hasn't met a pretencious english major?] this one won’t be solved by figuring out his ‘complexity’–he had none. he wore his depression on his sleeve like everyting else. i believe it will end up being an obscure literary and/or religious referene, perhaps tweaked a bit, that he chose because it made him feel more mysterious, more complex, more brooding. No one wants to feel normal. normal is vanilla. books take us somewhere else. he was running from the 9 to 5 like everyother college student looking over the cliff at the rest of their lives. granted, he was much more disturbed to be capable of something so disgusting, but the only mystery here is the random choices he made to give himself the appearance of depth.
My prayers are with the families of those that lost thier lives. what an awful thing to have to experience.
According to reports from South Korean Buddhist authorities, the name written on the arm of Cho Seung Hui, ‘ISMAIL AX’, is an anagram for SALAMI XI, and as deciphered according to the ancient texts of the unique Buddhism-Shamanic religion as practiced only in ancient Korea.
The meaning of SALAMI comes from the Italian verb salare, meaning ‘to salt’, and is a reference to salting the earth, and which refers to the practice of spreading salt on fields to make them incapable of being used for crop-growing.
This was done in ancient times at the end of some wars as an extremely punitive scorched earth tactic.
The Latin symbol for the number 11 (XI) is the reference used by Cho Seung Hui to signify his ‘authority’ to ‘Salt the Earth’ as this is the number ascribed by both ancient and modern numerologists alike to great artists, religious leaders, prophets, and leading figures in history, and is considered to be the ‘highest’ of all numbers.
Actually, in the Islamic version of the Pentateuch, or OT (to Christians), Ismail takes on Issac’s role, and is Ibrahim’s, (Abraham’s) intended sacrifice.
Ishmael of Moby Dick fame has A TATOOED ARM, as well as representing the disaffected.
(sorry for shouting)
The Biblical name in the old testament was ‘ISHMAEL’, NOT ISMAEL. Puh-leez. I don’t buy for a minute that this had anything at all to do with religion of any sort. This kind of violence isn’t within anybody’s religious beliefs unless you look at all the abstracts, who in realities, are detractors of all forms of religion, and in fact, merely use the word to incite. We need to be smarter than they think we are.
It is a CODE,It is a call to arms,to follow his act.He lets live one person in the one class room hoping he will follow and copy cat.It is a double coding sytem just like the 911 crew used-to call out sleepers and followers.He didn`t have many friends and his family was a bust? Richard MCbeef.Moby D leave the people behind and go into the sea or the turning away.It could`nt fix the system so he went killroy at it.What was he missing the ?mark kid,he was missing a country and any real friends.IS mail ax-The ?MARK kid he was missing N or naturalization IS your mail axed or INS or IS N in your mail and cuttting it open? and double coded call to arms-he would`nt join america so the INS watched HIM and after the acts before the killroy bit he had cops and mental health cops on him.The INS would have to be in his mail it was axed open it cuts his soul as he says in his tape and they had satellite intell on him-the cancer in his head he says.04/09/07 a back code he was looking back after his death in his mind.DIG 4/9/7 backwards DIG the movie-THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE and the Dandy WARhols-000 three shots in to each person(04/09/07) DIG -blam blam blam-the zeros.A call to allah or a turning away? he said he could have left so it was a call to ARMS or a CALLING out INS IS IN his MAIL AX/double code the N is missing it is the ? mark kid without a country and not turning away but judgement of most all of those he could shoot but he leaves ONE to tell his story and hopes he will follow his and he will have a freind in death that he did not have in life.Mourad E ISMAIL is a person who works in mathmaticals proceedings of the america mathmatical society.M.E.H the zeros of basic bessel fuctions.Some one who draws radiowave maps and makes the impossible a normal fuction or a new reality.Could he also be pointing at him?-he hated the college set and killed some of them so I would think about that angle a while and with what he said in his tape I think that is a good mathmathical.A person pretending to sleep?.A son sacrficed?A call to arms or a turning away?.A call to arms by a son sacrificed.He rapped not no,he had no sexual contact with them-he judged them and killed them, He killed in the name of religion-he was better then them is what he is saying.DIG the movie 2004 the brian jonestown massacre-religion.He wanted to be the best but he chose the wrong battle feild for the wrong reasons.He was all about sending messages-his tape his pixs his killroy DEgrande murders.He lived in a dream world of DIG movies and writtings.DOUBLE CODE system IS mail AX IS INS in mail is axed and a call to arms ISMAIL AX he was saying he was doing GOD`s will in his tapes and by his actions.He had no one but his AL-QAEDA brothers-he did thier will and called out the next chosen ONE thats what GOD told him to do in his head.JUDGEMENT
Very interesting replies. Regarding the Buddhist note about salt, the atomic number of sodium is 11 (XI)! SALAMI could also just be ISMA’AL (ISMAIL), the pariah or outcast of society.
Also, 11 is considered a mysterious number because it is the first number that cannot be represented by our ten fingers. And Cho called himself “Question Mark,” the mystery man.
Cho also used Ismail Ax as his handle in a video game.
What frustrates me is that The American Family Association of Michigan was all to willing to connect a murderer to Islam without knowledge.
How many people who receive the AFF email believe it to be true because it comes from one of their chosen trusted sources?
Ideology for AFF must trump facts.
The AFF sent the email out long before basics of this man and his family were known. And the American Family Association becomes one of hundreds of groups finding ways to internalize and externalize blame, facts be damned.
That is irresponsible of any group claiming Christianity. Ignorance of religious and cultural influences unique to his life, as well as his level of autism are no excuse to a rush to judgement to raise money.
Wondering what Ismail Ax means does not diminish the victims Cho chose to kill. Crypticness isn’t unique to english majors in crime or in every day life.
The Michigan American family Association states it” is committed to aggressively and effectively promoting and defending the traditional Judeo-Christian values.”
Oh.
Families (including Cho Seung-Huos) haven’t had a chance to bury their dead, while groups like the AFF of Michigan willfully counter thier own claim to “promote the Christian ethic of decency.”
I went with the anagram notion..came up with ‘Axialism’. I’m not positive it’s even a word, but I found an essay where it was used. The essay is here: http://www.kemalkurt.de/tomcheesemen.html . It defines axialism as “a consciously performed exploration, even exploitation, of the axes of identity and difference - nationality, ‘race’, ethnicity, religion, place, class, gender and so on.”
I read through most of the article..I really don’t think there’s any correlation between the events. I haven’t really found the term anywhere else (other than another Blog about “Ismail Ax” where someone pointed out the word, though they noted it as a religous term or a sexual term..the sexual term is actually axilism), so…who knows..
There is a report in The Washington Post that says he wrote Ismale Ax.
Re Suzanne [15]; and just to add to the oddness of the thread: the variants between Hebrew and Arabic spelling and pronunciation allow for Ishmael as an equivalent of Ismail (you see the same kinds of consonantal variants in a number of words from cognates languages: Shalom (hbr) and Salaam (arbc) = peace; note that the difference in the initial consonantal sound, this is not uncommon in cognate languages. Other examples are “soft” and “hard” consonantal variants at the end of a word: beth (hbrw) and baet (arbc) = house.
Doesn`t anybody find it striking that
The number 88 Cho drew on a peace of paper
he also sent to NBC News can also clearly
be found in the name : Ismail Ax
using the A1B2C3 Encryption ?
Ismail Ax = 88
9i 19s 13m 1a 9i 12l 1a 24x
9 19 13 1 9 12 1 24= 88
http://viginiatechmassacre911.blogspot.com/