Posted on 04/05/2005 3:57:14 AM PDT by Doctor13
Al Qaeda High - Alleged Bush Assassin a Graduate of Local Saudi Madrassa
Stella Jatras, who normally follows the Balkans for us, reports on efforts to establish yet another Saudi Madrassa outside Washington, D.C.
Nestled snuggly in the Northern hills of Virginia, lies the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA), better known as Al-Qaeda High.
ISA's most notable graduate - so far - is Ahmed Omar Abu Ali. Ali was arrested recently for plotting to assassinate President Bush. Ali was born in Houston and later moved to Falls Church, Va., where he was valedictorian of his class at ISA. After graduation, a federal indictment says he pursued religious studies in Saudi Arabia in 2000 and joined an Al-Qaeda cell in 2001. The assassination plot was hatched while Ali was studying in Saudi Arabia, according to the indictment.
In 1998, a handful of Loudoun County citizens with whom I and my husband were associated opposed the proposed construction of a new site for the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) in Loudoun County. One of the main reasons we opposed the "academy" was the fact that the Islamic school was being financed 100% by the Saudi Arabian government and its board of governors was comprised 100% of Saudi government ministers of education, who could dictate the use of Saudi (Wahhabi) textbooks in the religious studies curriculum of the school. Unfortunately, the Loudoun Board of Supervisors and the Board of Appeals chose to ignore our concerns and approved construction of the school.
We were simply concerned with the security of our county but for that we were labelled, "racists," "bigots," "intolerant," "un-Christian," and "un-American," to name a few, in major and local newspapers. And what was our crime? Our crime was our concern for the security of our community and our great nation. Our concern was about bringing into our county an "academy" that was to be controlled by the oppressive Islamic nation of Saudi Arabia, a nation that not only funded Islamic schools (madrassas) in Pakistan that produced the Taliban, but a nation that also produced 15 of the 19 terrorists who attacked our country on 9/11.
We were concerned about an oppressive nation that has prevented for over 23 years the return of an American mother's daughters who were baptized Christians but kidnapped to Saudi Arabia by her Saudi ex-husband and forced to convert to Islam; a nation where not one church or synagogue is permitted; a nation where Christians are subjected to the same harsh Islamic shar'iah laws of beheading or the amputation of hands and feet, or of being stoned to death; a nation that is offended when Swiss Air flies its aircraft into Saudi Arabia because it bears the Cross on their tails, representing the Swiss national flag. Fortunately, the Swiss refused to remove the offending Cross as the Saudis had demanded.
We have invited into our county a nation where 15 young school girls were locked in a school and burned to death because religious police prevented them from leaving the burning school and didn't allow any men to go to their rescue. Why? Because they were not wearing the traditional Saudi head to toe covering known as an abaya.
Emotions ran high at the Board of Supervisors hearings on this issue. At the many meetings that were held, we were told by one lawyer for the Saudi government that "the citizens of Loudoun County did not have the right to tell the Saudi government what it could or couldn't do in this country; that's up to the State Department," to which my husband commented, "George Washington, Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson must be rolling in their graves."
As for being called "un-American," I will tell you just how "un-American" my husband is. Before he was old enough to go to school his mother, proud of her status as a newly naturalized citizen, had him memorize the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution because she considered those documents - written in English - to be the essence of what this country stands for. In our 52 years of marriage, my husband spent 30 of those years as an Air Force officer serving his country. He flew 230 combat missions in Vietnam. Our sons were without a father during the year he as in harm's way. Unlike many of his fellow pilots, and by the grace of God, he returned safely to his family. During those 30 years of military service, I accompanied him whenever possible to wherever we went, which included living in a rat-infested apartment during his pilot training because it was the only accommodation we could afford for ourselves and our first baby son.. These accusations by the media were hateful, ugly, and painful and I believe we are owed an apology by the media that demonized us.
It was only after the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors approved the building of ISA in Ashburn that we learned that Ismail Selim El Barasse, 51, an accountant from Falls Church, was in prison in New York for refusing to appear before a grand jury investigating money laundering. Before he was jailed, El Barasse worked as a comptroller for ISA. A Washington Post report by John Mintz and Michael Grunwald on October 31, 1998 stated that agents were reviewing the funds handled by El Barasse, including bank accounts he shared with Mohammed Abu Marzook, a top Hamas leader who was deported to Jordan in 1996. In hundreds of pages of public documents, the FBI had outlined a complex series of covert real estate deals it says were designed to launder $820,000 from a Saudi company to Hamas, listed as a terrorist organization by the Department of State. A lawyer in defense of El Barasse said that his client is "a freedom fighter without a gun," and accused the FBI of running a "witch hunt" to discourage Muslims from sending money to areas under Palestinian control.
At the time of the ISA proposal, much of the opposition had to do with its size - larger than 22 football fields - the loss of potential tax revenue to the county due to the zoning waiver for a school and the increased traffic due to busing for up to 3500 students. Not much attention was paid to discussions regarding the security of our community or the impact of having a school in our midst totally dominated by a foreign government whose society and customs are so antithetical to our own. For the citizens of Loudoun County who didn't pay much attention to discussions regarding ISA at the time, perhaps the events of September 11, 2001, subsequent revelations of the involvement of Saudi Arabia in the bin Laden-Al-Qaeda network, and other factors regarding ISA should have caused some to rethink their position on having ISA in our community. They did not.
Other reasons for opposition included a tax-exempt facility for the Saudi Arabian government and questionable security features such as pop-up barricades at each entrance. ISA also proposed to build an 800-bed dormitory but dropped the dorm when pressed on its claim that all the proposed students were supposed to be from the D.C. metropolitan area. In one Islamic school the students recite the Pledge of Allegiance as, "One nation under Allah, indivisible, with justice and liberty for all, Inshallah," which means, "God willing."
Recently, a commentator on Fox News interviewed two young Islamic women, graduates from the Islamic Saudi Academy. The host pointed out that Saudi- produced textbooks used by ISA contain passages such as ". . .one sign of the Day of Judgment will be that Muslims will fight and kill Jews, who hide behind trees that say, 'Oh Muslim, Oh Servant of God, here is a Jew hiding behind me. Come here and kill him.'" The quotations also appears in a 2002 report on IA by The Washington Post.
Fortunately, the project to expand the school into Loudoun County was cancelled and the land sold for a healthy profit, but the ISA school that produced Ahmed Ali is still operating in Fairfax County and ISA has a second facility in Alexandria, VA. One can only wonder how many more potential terrorists ISA will produce.
BTTT
Hey jerks, how about a field trip to Gitmo?
And we follow and surveil every attendee for the rest of their lives.
And our teachers can't even discipline students who won't say the Pledge of Allegiance.
I know this will never happen, but I would like for our government to put these schools on notice that they will be shut down and dismantled the next time a Saudi is discovered to have been involved in a terrorist attack on our soil. Apparently they have a great deal of control over their people, right up until they become terrorists, so let's make them accountable for the actions of their people.
((( TM ping )))
check out what they're teaching the studends:
http://www.freedomhouse.org/religion/pdfdocs/FINAL%20FINAL%20Saudi.pdf
(you will need Acrobat Reader for the above link - it's a pdf)
Also for more information on Citizen Soldier, please go to their website www.citizensoldier.com for more information.
Their football team is lousy. Nobody wants to hold the ball because it's "pigskin." It shouldn't be long before the girls are out shopping for that must-have prom burka. Oh, yeah, I forgot.....they're not allowed to attend school.
ISA was formerly my MOUNT VERNON HIGH SCHOOL, in the '50s.
bump! Thx!
I heard the baseball team wasn't too bad, until someone took the sign for a "Suicide Squeeze" too literally and killed 3 teammates the opposing catcher and the umpire.
LOL!!!
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