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What does the word ¡°Ismail Ax¡± on an arm of the Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-hui mean? The Chicago Tribune on Wednesday suggested a reference to the Koran, where Ismail is a son of Abraham (or Ibrahim in Arabic). In Islam, Ismail destroyed idols using an ax with his father after converting to monotheism. In that case, ¡°Ismail Ax¡± can be interpreted as the punishment of God for unjust acts.
In Christianity and Judaism, Ismail is an outcast. Abraham had Ismail by a slave because his wife Sarah was infertile. But later he expelled the slave and Ismail to the wilderness after Sarah gave birth to Isaac. Some say that Cho might have likened himself to Ismail, given that he was an outsider among fellow students. But since Cho majored in English, other theories speculate that Ismail is a protagonist from literature. Other suggestions include that Ismail is the name of a man who dated Cho¡¯s ex-girlfriend, or is a cryptogram that needs to be deciphered.
Meanwhile, ¡°Ismail Ax¡± became a top search item on the Web and the third hottest topic on Technorati.com, a U.S. web site that tracks the blogosphere. A man in Texas has come under fire for registering the domain www.ismailax.com as a domain after learning about the news.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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