Posted on 10/19/2007 1:01:40 PM PDT by hercuroc
A congressionally mandated panel that promotes religious freedom is recommending the Bush administration close a Virginia-based Islamic school run by the Saudi government if school officials don't comply with demands to turn over textbooks that may include lessons on jihad and intolerance toward other religions. "Significant concerns remain about whether what is being taught at the (school) promotes religious intolerance and may adversely affect the interests of the United States," said a report released by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Saudi embassy officials say the books long ago were cleaned up and made available to commission members, but the commissioners never bothered to go to The Islamic Saudi Academy in Northern Virginia to check them out for themselves. "There's nothing to hide. The books are there," embassy spokesman Nail Al-Jubeir said. Commission spokeswoman Judith Ingram said the panel did not request to speak to academy officials because that went beyond the commission's mandate, but it has been trying to get a hold of the religious texts, written in Arabic and sanctioned by the Saudi government for use at the school. Without the books in hand, the school should be closed voluntarily until the State Department can determine exactly what the books say, reads the report. The panel's findings focuses on a number of areas of concern with Saudi Arabia, including a 2003 study showing that Saudi texts encouraged violence toward others, "misguides the pupils into believing that in order to safeguard their own religion, they must violently repress and even physically eliminate the 'other.'" A separate study last year conducted by The Center for Religious Freedom, run by Freedom House, and the Institute for Gulf Affairs, found that a ninth-grade Saudi textbook "teaches teenagers in apocalyptic terms that violence towards Jews, Christians and unbelievers is sanctioned by God,".
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
“A congressionally mandated panel that promotes religious freedom is recommending the Bush administration close a Virginia-based Islamic school”
If this is a public school then this is appropriate. However, if this is a private religious school then this is a big “camel’s nose under the tent” problem. If it’s okay for the government to close this school; how much of a leap is it for the government to close a Catholic school for teaching that abortion is murder and must be stopped?
My concern would be whether this is a school for US citizens or for diplomats’ children. If only non US citizens attend then I have no issue with the government taking this stance
“..a Virginia-based Islamic school run by the Saudi government..”
Why be alarmed? The Saudis are our great friends.
I don’t get the impression it’s a public school. That being the case; your concerns are well founded. Even if it is a school run by a dark ages death cult.
Of course if it’s run by a foreign govt., that’s a different story. I’s not private ... not in my country.
Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, once a valedictorian at the school, was charged in Saudi Arabia two years ago with taking part in an al-Qaida plot to assassinate President Bush. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Sources: AP, CNN
When the Catholic school begins advocating murder, decapitation, and slavery - especially of Pro-Abortion advocates - it's probably time to start considering a RICO suit against that school's leadership.
Private schools don't get a free pass for advocating criminal conspiracies.
WHOA!! Didn’t know that.
Be sure to read the Freedom House report from last year. It’s about mosques but applies equally to Islamic schools.
If I’n not mistaken, advocacy of murder in this manner is a state felony, a federal hate crime, a state conspiracy, and grounds for a federal or **CIVIL** RICO suit.
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http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=383&report=45
Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Invade American Mosques
January 28, 2006
In January of 2006, Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom released a new report exposing the dissemination of hate propaganda in America by the government of Saudi Arabia.
In January of 2006, Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom released a new report exposing the dissemination of hate propaganda in America by the government of Saudi Arabia.
The 89-page report, “Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Fill American Mosques,” is based on a year-long study of over two hundred original documents, all disseminated, published or otherwise generated by the government of Saudi Arabia and collected from more than a dozen mosques in the United States.
Excerpts [edits by Angkor]:
-— Various Saudi government publications gathered for this study, most of which are in Arabic, assert that it is a religious obligation for Muslims to hate Christians and Jews...
-— The documents promote contempt for the United States because it is ruled by legislated civil law rather than by totalitarian Wahhabi-style Islamic law. They condemn democracy as un-Islamic;
-— The documents stress that when Muslims are in the lands of the unbelievers, they must behave as if on a mission behind enemy lines....
-— ... other Muslims, especially those who advocate tolerance, are condemned as infidels.... Since, under Saudi law, “apostates” from Islam can be sentenced to death, this is an implied death threat against the tolerant Muslim imam, as well as an incitement to vigilante violence;
-— For a Muslim who fails to uphold the Saudi Wahhabi sect’s sexual mores... advise, “it would be lawful for Muslims to spill his blood and to take his money;”
-— Regarding those who convert out of Islam, the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs explicitly asserts, they “should be killed;”
I can’t argue with that but I still worry about the slippery slope.
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