Ismail AX - Latest Conspiracy Theory: Islam responsible for VA Tech Massacre!

You couldn't make this up if you wanted too: another conspiracy nut job case. Mainly from Fox originates a story linking the words Ismail AX to the Korean gun nut responsible for the VA Tech murders:

Sources told the Tribune that the words "ISMAIL AX" were also found written in red ink on the inside of one of Cho's arms.

The cyber-sentinels of IslamicThreat turned it into this:

Just heard it on Fox News. Cho Seung-Hui left a suicide note and signed it as Ismael-AX (or Ismail-AX as the media published just now).

and quickly embroidered on it some more here:

Liviu Librescu, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, lost his life trying to save the life of students. How ironic! Ishmael strikes again! A man using the name of the father of the Muslims kills a descendant of Isaac."

Another story has it that Ismail-AX was his gaming nickname but didn't attribute any religious connotations to it. More conspiracy nuggets here... (Google blog results) Extra! Extra! Read all about it...

Let's blame Islam for this one too. The fundienutz are lapping it all up eagerly...

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Update:

Despite the fact that evidence for the Cho-Islam connection seems to be entirely lacking and that all evidence points to the thesis of a deranged lone gunman, the "Ismail AX" croc, in good conspiracy theory tradition, has taken root in the less smart part of the blagghing networks. There aren't that many that don't look at the Islamic connection with deep scepticism, but those that buy into it are also out there and almost invariably of the fundamentalist Judeo-Christian variety.

It would be all too easy to dismiss these people as a small minority, not really worthy of time and attention but the fact of the matter is that this ratcheting up the rhetoric of "t'wos Muslim vermin wot did it" without evidence, substance or proof is frankly speaking nudging us one more small step forward toward the "clash of civilisations", even though, bloggosphere-wise at least, for the time being it appears more like a clash of the nincompoops.

Here's one blogger who's bought the whole croc hook, line and sinker, convinced of course that the MSM are simply covering up the connection. As if the absence of the story in the MSM actually proves his position, which of course it doesn't in any way, shape or form.

Rather tellingly, Mad Zionist's stance has already attracted the attention of one French Muslim commenter, who's vowed to take it out on some of Mad Zionist's French brethren. To Mad Zionist this will of course be further proof of the utter perfidity of Islam and Muslims and the fact that (in his own words) "Islam is a terror organisation that needs to be eradicated". To the Muslim radical, it will simply confirm the stereotype of Muslim hating Westerners. No good can come of either position.

Whilst most of the world's conflict are essentially not religious in nature but are really about land, resources and power, religion continues time and time again to be hijacked by leaders and their acolytes to rally the troops around the common cause. And slogans from a dim and distant past, based on often meaningless phrases and derived from ancient scrolls that have lost much of their significance vis-à-vis the modern world continue to provide the rhetoric and battle-cries of wars, past, present and future...

It makes me be proud to be an agnostic/atheist no end.