Ibrahim, Lot and Sarah started their long travel. They crossed Babylon, went through Syria and Palestine calling people to Allah, helping the poor and doing good deeds. By that time Ibrahim married Sarah. Their hope was to have children who would spread the Message of Allah after their death. As for Lot, he emigrated to the land of Sodom and settled there. Time went by and no children were born to Sarah. She realized she was sterile. She accepted her fate and submitted to the will of Allah. Ibrahim and Sarah moved to Egypt where the king gave Sarah a woman to be her servant. The woman's name was Hajar. Sarah was seeing Ibrahim' s hair getting white, and it grieved her to see his chance of having any child slipping away. She offered Hajar her servant as a wife to her husband, and prayed Allah to bless Hajar and Ibrahim with a child.
And so came Ismail, a baby boy born to Hajar. How unselfish Sarah was! For her, the need to have an offspring who would carry the Message after Ibrahim was greater than her pride. Fourteen years later Allah rewarded Sarah with a son, Ishaq in spite of her old age.
I found dozens of Islamic sites that use the name Ismail and Ishmael interchangeably.
The guy had it written on his arm in red ink...definitely a weirdo, but the link to Islam is pretty evident, IMHO.
I’m not saying he was anything more than a lone whacko, but I do believe he was influenced by Islam. As I said in another post, what “normal” college student uses the words “charlatans” and “debauchery.”
Al-Zawahiri calls Bush a charlatan in this speech:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/09/29/zawahiri.tape/
and there’s lots of talk of debauchery on Islamic sites...but the debauchery reference might be in used in almost any religious context, but charlatan...who calls people charlatans?