Here's an article blaming the shootings on Islam.  Sounded like good 
fodder for an improvetheworld debate...

(Note special guest Erica Soule, current student at Virginia Tech.)

(Also, on a happier note: Dr Rob Felty triumphantly defended his 
dissertation today!)

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id 1807B

Full article text:

Ismail Ax: The Shooter Was Another 'Son of Sacrifice'

First it was Johnny Muhammad, now it was Cho Sueng Hui aka Ismail Ax. 
Precisely how many mass shooters have to turn out to have adopted Muslim 
names before we get it? Islam has become the tribe of choice of those who 
hate American society. I'm not talking about people who grew up as 
Muslims, confident and secure in their faith, good fathers, sons and 
neighbors. I'm talking about the angry, malignant, narcissist loners who 
want to reject their community utterly, to throw off their 'slave name' 
and represent the downtrodden of the earth by shooting their friends and 
neighbors.

This morning I read that the Virginia Tech shooter died with the name 
Ismail Ax written in red ink on his arm. The mainstream press doesn't seem 
to have a clue as to what this might mean. To quote Indiana Jones, "Didn't 
any of you guys go to Sunday School?"

The story starts with a man named Abraham. He is the father of the Jews, 
the Muslims and the Christians. He was born in Iraq, the son of a wealthy 
idol manufacturer. He came to believe that there was only one true God 
and, according to tradition, took up his ax and destroyed his father's 
idols.

Eventually he left Iraq and moved to what is now known as Israel. He had a 
son with his concubine whom she named Ishmael. The Muslim world prefers 
the Arabic spelling of the name: Ismail. Eventually Abraham had a son by 
his rightful wife and named the son Isaac. Ishmael and his mother were 
disinherited and sent out into what is now Saudi Arabia. Isaac became the 
heir.

Eventually, God decided to test Abraham by telling him to kill his son, 
Isaac. Abraham took up the knife, but God stopped him at the last moment. 
Isaac lived and eventually became a man of great wealth. Ishmael became a 
desert warrior chieftain.

The Jews are the descendants of Isaac, the Arabs are the descendants of 
Ishmael.

In the 7th Century, Muhammad, the founder of Islam, re-wrote the story, 
claiming that Ismail was the true faithful descendant of Abraham and that 
it was he, not Isaac, who God told Abraham to sacrifice. Ismail was the 
one saved. For Muslims, Ismail (not Isaac) was the true 'Son of 
Sacrifice.' In the original version of the story, Abraham used a knife, in 
some of the later Muslim versions, he used an Ax.

Flash forward 1,400 years: a sullen, angry young man who rages against 
rich people and apparently against Christians, writes a play in which a 
mother and son try to kill his step-father, but in the end the boy (age 
about 13, the age many think Ismail was when he was exiled) is murdered by 
the step-father with 'a deadly blow'. Father issues? Yeah, I think so.

Cho Sueng-hui cum Ismail Ax hated the American society to which he had 
been brought 15 years earlier. His play McBeef (a poor pun from an English 
Lit major on Macbeth) is one endless screed against the corruption of 
American culture. A cheesy re-telling of Shakespeare's Hamlet, it involves 
a young man abused by his step-father, a former NFL football player. The 
son, throws epithets at his father calling him a 'Catholic priest'. And 
makes derisive comments about McDonalds. It seems that none of the 
foundational structures of Western Civilization, Christianity, capitalism, 
family, are spared his rage. In other words, he really meant what he said 
in his last words: "you (that is us, America) made me do this."

-- 
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves  - -  search://"Daniel Reeves"

"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition."
   -- Timothy Leary