Posted on 11/24/2007 6:36:04 PM PST by NormsRevenge
ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Its most virulent critics have dubbed it "Terror High," and 12 U.S. senators and a federal commission want to shut it down.
The teachers, administrators and some 900 students at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Fairfax County have heard the allegations for years — after the Sept. 11 attacks and then a few years later when a class valedictorian admitted he had joined al-Qaida.
Now the school is on the defensive again, with a report issued last month by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom saying the academy should be closed, pending a review of its curriculum and textbooks.
Abdalla al-Shabnan, the school's director general, says criticism of the school is based not on evidence, but on preconceived notions of the Saudi educational system.
The school, serving grades K-12 on campuses in Fairfax and Alexandria, receives financial support from the Saudi government, and its textbooks are based on Saudi curriculum. Critics say the Saudis propagate a severe version of Islam in their schools.
But al-Shabnan said the school significantly modified those textbooks to remove passages deemed intolerant of other religions. Among the changes, officials removed from teachers' versions of first-grade textbooks an excerpt instructing teachers to explain "that all religions, other than Islam, are false, including that of the Jews, Christians and all others."
At an open house earlier this month in which the school invited reporters to tour the school and meet students and faculty, al-Shabnan seemed weary of the criticism.
"I didn't think we'd have to do this," he said of the open house. "Our neighbors know us. They know the job we are doing."
Indeed, many people familiar with the school say the accusations are unfounded. Fairfax County Supervisor Gerald Hyland, whose district includes the academy, has defended it and arranged for the county to review the textbooks to put questions to rest. That review is under way. The academy's Alexandria campus is leased from Fairfax County.
Schools that regularly compete against the academy in interscholastic sports — many of them small, private Christian schools — are among the academy's strongest defenders.
Robert Mead, soccer coach at Bryant Alternative High School, a public school in the Alexandria section of Fairfax county, said the academy's reputation has been unfairly marred by people who haven't even bothered to visit the school.
"We've never had one altercation" with the academy's players on the soccer field, Mead said. "My guys are hostile. Their guys keep fights from breaking out."
The academy opened in 1984 and stayed out of the spotlight until the Sept. 11 attacks. Criticisms were revived in 2005, when a former class valedictorian, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was charged with joining al-Qaida while attending college in Saudi Arabia. He was convicted on several charges, including plotting to assassinate President Bush, and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Most recently, the religious freedom commission — an independent federal agency created by Congress — issued its report, saying it was rebuffed in its efforts to obtain textbooks to verify claims they had been reformed.
The commission recommended that the academy be shut down until it could review the textbooks to ensure they do not promote intolerance.
Since the commission's report, the academy has given copies of its books to the Saudi embassy, which then provided them to the State Department. The commission is waiting to get the books from the State Department.
On Nov. 15, a dozen U.S. senators, including Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., wrote a letter to the State Department urging it to act on the commission's recommendations. And on Tuesday, Reps. Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Steve Israel, D-N.Y., introduced legislation to write the commission's recommendations regarding the academy into law.
Michael Cromartie, the commission's chairman, said he does not question the character of the student body or the faculty, most of whom are Christian. The commission is focused specifically on the textbooks, and has legitimate concerns given the problems that have been endemic in the Saudi curriculum, he said.
"It's not about whether the students are civil to their opponents on a ball field. It's about the textbooks," he said.
At the open house, seniors said they worry that news accounts will hurt their college applications. Most students said they were shocked that the government panel had recommended closing the school.
Omar Talib, a senior, said the school caters to students from across the Muslim world, not just Saudis. It makes no judgments on other religions or against Shiite Islam, as some critics have contended.
"I have four children at this school. I've never heard them say 'Mom, today we learned we should kill the Jews,'" said Malika Chughtai of Vienna. "If I heard that kind of talk, I would not have them here."
To satisfy me, they need to get rid of the koran.
I would love to read a copy of THAT lease. I wonder if is recorded at the registry of deeds in Fairfax County?
If the county leases to them, it should be a public domain document.
The lease may indicate whether the school should be closed or not.
For example, the lease might just be for $1.00 per year, and the rest of the lease terms might be "confidential."
I'd say that would be enough to move it to be closed.
Secondly, since it is Saudi financed, I would close it on the simple principle that there is no reciprocity by the Saudi government which allows minority religious educational institutions to exist in Saudi Arabia.
Thirdly, a review of the texts is not enough, because much of what is taught in traditional madrassas is done by reciting after a teacher and memorizing the discourse and repeating it back to the teacher. Arab culture, you should know, has a whole institutional method associated with Islam that does NOT involve learning from books, but learning from the spoken word through memorization. Many students can recite the whole Koran from memory, having learned it aurally, and they can also recite the other stuff that has been deleted from textbooks.
Not only does this school need to be shut down, but every such school in the USA. The Saudis fund hundreds of them around the world, preparing the infrastructure for the World Caliphate.
The other factor that people need to watch is that many Muslim communities in the USA already operate according to Sharia law inside their congregations. Many states give them the right to do this under arbitration laws which allow a corporate group to settle disputes and conflict via arbitration rules agreed to by the group, which is , guess what? Sharia Law. Of course the punishment by stoning and amputation of limbs and impalement on a sharp stake, are not invoked, BUT the whole structure of sharia law is just sitting there , ticking away and being applied in civil matters, and divorce matters etc. Then the couple simply applies for a consent decree of divorce which ever state in which they live. Go check out Michigan.
It's a ticking time bomb.
The big deal is that the school is conducted in Arabic for children in Arabic speaking families.
It's current mission probably extends beyond the authorizations made in the reciprocity treaty with the Saudis for their embassy operations ~ and if you'd take a look some day you'd find that as a matter of course countries provide their larger legations with a government owned/operated/subsidized school for their dependent children.
We do it. They do it.
In the end I think the Saudi government is going to have to scale back their school and restrict it to Saudi citizens and contractors.
Absent popular democracy, politics in Saudi is run as a private enterprise.
That "terrorists" come from Saudi is no surprise. That the government in Saudi is one of the targets of those "terrorists" is also no surprise.
That's why the Saudi government chops off their heads as fast as they can catch them.
Of course they chop heads for a lot of reasons there anyway, and they use REAL torture ~ nothing at all like panties on the head or waterboarding.
BTW, we have some AlQaida "terrorists" who were born in the USA ~ one of them is this formerly Jewish guy who seems to have become their main mouthpiece.
Try explaining that eh.
Shut down the mosques too, or we - or our progeny - will live - or not live - to regret it.
This school is not an embassy school, nor is their anything in the article which would indicate that it is.
The Saudis fund such schools around the world and their purpose is simply to put a Saudi cultural infrastructure in place. Now you need to know I saw this type of thing done by the Trudeau government under its bilingualism program in parts of English Canada. I recognize it when I see it.
No county government should be subsidizing a counter culture in the continental USA. Nor should our federal government. As far as students from that school not having been jailed, you may be right, but I do know that the children of Saudi nobility and aristocracy regularly receive "favors" from our criminal justice system, when they do get in trouble with US authorities. They come from the privileged class, and seek to be treated with special privileges here in the USA, bought and paid for with oil money influence gleaned from Americans themselves.
Skeptical still? Look at these where a Saudi Royal gets to choose his jail to serve a year on a too, too light sentence:
The Martha's Vineyard Times: Saudi royal family member chooses the ...Saudi royal family member chooses the Dukes jail after motor vehicle homicide. Dukes County House of Correction in Edgartown ...
www.mvtimes.com/news/2005/11/23/saudi_royal_in_jail.php
I would have no regrets to see the school closed, or limited to schooling the children of Saudi embassy staff, if thats what it is ( which I doubt.)
Assimilation into US culture happens in US schools, and if the students are US citizens, they should be assimilating US culture in US schools, not preserving what amounts to a counter culture with the proven potential to do future harm to our nation and its people.
Now if it is a private school, then why is it funded by a national government? Thats not a private school, it is a government school with all that implies. A government that has a proven track record of moving surreptitiously against US policy interests here at home and abroad? I would bet there is a fairly substantive linkage between the school staff and the DNC multicultural mavins in Washington.
What the moslem world in general and the saudis in particular—doesn’t quite understand is just how much discipline and self control this world requires of friend, foe & bystander.
For example, the Russians can incinerate the USA. The Chinese can take out most large US cities. Several nations in the EU have the ability to turn their nukes on the USA. The EU, Russian and China all want to be peer rivals of the USA. Neither the governments or the people in these countries blow up US citizens. Not with nukes and not with small caliber weapons.
So their rivalry is tolerable because they are disciplined.
What’s intolerable is a lack of discipline. What’s become apparent to the rest of the world — is that Moslem world in general and the Saudis in particular are undisciplined. (Discipline defined here is not a matter of chopping people’s heads or hands off. Its an internalized matter among the whole of the populace—and that includes both the governors and the governed.)
While the Saudis have cracked down since their nationals were caught—its not likely that they didn’t know about their people traveling to Iraq by way of Syria. They only acted when they were caught—and documented evidence was presented to them.
Think this generates trust in anything Saudis do in the USA?
Where is John Singleton Moseby when you REALLY need him?
Huh?
The Grey Ghost.
Bookmarked
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