“Call me Ishmael” begins Herman Melville’s
Moby Dick, probably the most familiar opening sentence in American literature. An Ishmael is an outcast, which is one reason why Melville gave the name to his narrator. Ishmael was the son of Abraham and Hagar; he and his mother were banished to the wilderness by Sarah, where an angel predicted that he would forever be at adds with society (Genesis 21:9-21). The Muslims, however, do not share this biblical tradition, considering Ishmael their progenitor.