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Hide and Seek (Saudi Academy in Virginia)
National Review ^ | August 3, 2009 | Nina Shea and Ali al-Ahmed

Posted on 08/03/2009 6:38:51 AM PDT by La Lydia

For nearly 25 years, the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA), the Virginia school founded by royal decree of Saudi King Fahd in 1984, immersed students of its Islamic-studies curriculum in the same Wahhabi interpretation of Islam that is taught in Saudi Arabia and in Saudi-funded madrassas around the world. That curriculum includes praise for militant jihad to “spread the faith” and permission for the killing of various categories of “unbelievers,” as well as other endorsements of religious intolerance.

Now, as it seeks permission from Fairfax County to expand its operations, ISA claims that, over the last school year, it replaced the Saudi religious curriculum with a more moderate one. Through private channels, we were able to acquire ISA’s Islamic-studies textbooks, all marked for use in the first semester of the 2008-09 school year. Compared to the original Saudi Education Ministry versions, these new Arabic-language textbooks — one slim, single volume for each grade — are indeed redacted and condensed.

We wish we could celebrate the deletions we helped catalyze, but we are not persuaded that the problem is solved. The books contain no significant discussion of jihad and make few references to the religious “other.” The silence is deafening. It raises the question — a question ISA has yet to answer — of what supplemental material the academy is using.

Jihad is a central tenet of Islam and is raised multiple times in the Koran. Saudi textbooks describe jihad as “the summit of Islam” and “one of the most magnificent acts of obedience to God,” and endorse its militant form for both defensive and aggressive purposes.

ISA’s new texts, however, make no mention of militant jihad, not even as a defensive measure. And they make only a single passing reference to the alternative view of jihad. ...

(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...


TOPICS: Politics/Elections; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: fairfax; fairfaxcounty; isa; islam; islamic; jihad; muslimstudents; saudi; saudiembassy; saudis; terror; violence
Regardless of what they do with their textbooks, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, the school's valedictorian in 1999, was convicted in November 2005 of joining Al Qaeda and plotting to assassinate President Bush, for which he was sentenced last week to life in prison; 2003 graduate Raed Abdul-Rahman Al-Saif was arrested last month at a Florida airport when he allegedly tried to board a plane while in possession of a seven-inch kitchen knife. ISA faculty and graduates have been implicated and convicted in numerous plots to launch homicide missions against Israel, board airlines with concealed weapons and photograph bridge structures in DC.

This school was supposedly established for the education of the children of Saudi diplomats in the Washington, D.C. area. Under the proposed expansion, the school would add four buildings, expanding its campus on 34 acres along Popes Head Road to accommodate 500 students (right now it has 300). And to top it all off, there are serious drainage and run-off problems this expansion will cause that no other entity, public or private, would be allowed to cause. This is a school for jihad located a few miles from our Capitol. The Fairfax County board of supervisors gets a chance tonight to chose sides: Americans, or jihadists who want to kill us and overturn our Constitutional form a government. Wonder what side they will take.

1 posted on 08/03/2009 6:38:52 AM PDT by La Lydia
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To: La Lydia

They say the fun really starts when students of that school try to transfer to normal schools in Fairfax County.....


2 posted on 08/03/2009 6:45:19 AM PDT by wendy1946
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To: wendy1946
When they learn they'll be going to school with... Jews and that forcibly collecting jizya is frowned upon?
3 posted on 08/03/2009 6:49:58 AM PDT by Rodebrecht (</government>)
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To: wendy1946

Who would want their kid to be studying alongside someone so carefully schooled in anti-American BS and jihad? Scary.


4 posted on 08/03/2009 6:51:07 AM PDT by La Lydia
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To: La Lydia
Under the proposed expansion, the school would add four buildings, expanding its campus on 34 acres along Popes Head Road to accommodate 500 students (right now it has 300). And to top it all off, there are serious drainage and run-off problems this expansion will cause that no other entity, public or private, would be allowed to cause.

I attended this school during third, fourth and fifth grades. I don't remember any water runoff issues, but I certainly wasn't looking. The school was up a long steep driveway, surrounded by a white cross-timbered fence. 500 students seems a bit much, however, for that location. But there were some large fields in the back, and they could use some of that and still have enough for a soccer field.

When I was in the school, we learned nothing about jihad. I don't recall it ever being mentioned. We did have to say prayers every day, though.

Of course, when I went there, it was called "Fairfax Christian School" and it wasn't an Islamic institution, but instead run by the very conservative Republican Robert Thorburn. It was also rare in that it was a for-profit private school. Thorburn sold the school to the Saudis for what he throught was a lot of money. Trouble was, the local zoning boards refused to allow him anywhere to build a new school, so they were located in church basements for a while. One of his relatives got arrested for cutting down a tree on his own property because the tree was a danger of falling on the house or something really weird like that.

5 posted on 08/03/2009 7:14:01 AM PDT by Koblenz (The Dem Platform, condensed: 1. Tax and Spend. 2. Cut and Run. 3. Man on Man)
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To: La Lydia
Pamela Geller writes:

...readers are well aware of the Islamic Saudi Academy's agenda of Islamic supremacism and attempt to expand their school on city land in Fairfax, Virginia. The Fairfax County government, in the tank for the Saudis, shows a 3 p.m., Monday, August 3 item for voting on the ISA expansion. Could they have found a more difficult time for working people to attend? This is not government by the people, it is government against the people.

“I cannot put the safety of the American citizenry at risk.” U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee on sentencing ISA valedictorian Ahmed Omar Abu Ali to life in prison...

How is it possible for a federal judge in Alexandria to understand a threat and just a few miles away 10 people in Fairfax don’t?

If one single terrorist is a threat, isn’t a training facility like the ISA which prepared him to join Al quaeda and consistently turns out numerous terrorists every year a multiple threat to “the safety of the American citizenry?” Monday afternoon’s vote is critical in the fight against the spread of Shariah. ...

I was reviewing tapes of the various hearings related to the Islamic Saudi Academy last night and I was struck by how belligerent the Supervisors were when there were only six of us at the hearing. They called us just about every name they could summon from their limited vocabulary... Those cunning Supervisors have scheduled the vote for mid-afternoon when they suspect all us will be at work... Monday’s hearing amounts to an auction and the public’s trust is for sale. We need to remind the Supervisors that it may also be the day that their unprincipled and visionless political careers come to an end.

6 posted on 08/03/2009 7:18:29 AM PDT by La Lydia
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To: Koblenz

The current campus doesn’t have the runoff situation that the expansion would cause. Since you went to school there, the Pope’s Head Road drainage situation has become worse, and no one is allowed to build anything in the catchment area or do anything that changes the drainage. Except, I suppose, the Saudi government.


7 posted on 08/03/2009 7:22:56 AM PDT by La Lydia
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To: La Lydia

So they approved it 6-4. I’d like to see the vote tally.

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local-beat/Fairfax-County-Approves-School-for-Terrorism-52385527.html


8 posted on 08/03/2009 8:38:45 PM PDT by deks (Obama Birthplace National Monument http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2169571/posts (:)
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To: deks
That so sucks. The six are bought and paid for. Shades of Gerald Connolly. The vote will be available here in a couple of days.

http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/cable/channel16/bosmeeting.htm

9 posted on 08/03/2009 9:14:58 PM PDT by La Lydia
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To: deks
Here's two of the antis: "The weight of this decision has not been lost on me, and I can sincerely say this has not been easy," said Republican Supervisor Pat Herrity, whose Springfield District encompasses the campus.

Notably, Herrity and Democratic Chairwoman Sharon Bulova were among those opposing the expansion, bucking the recommendation the county Planning Commission. The two opposed each other in a February election to replace outgoing Chairman Gerry Connolly.

10 posted on 08/03/2009 9:31:00 PM PDT by La Lydia
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To: La Lydia

Wow, that is a bit strange. I didn’t think Bulova would vote no...Have to give her some credit there. Good for Herrity.


11 posted on 08/03/2009 9:38:00 PM PDT by deks (Obama Birthplace National Monument http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2169571/posts (:)
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To: deks

Yeah, kudos to Sharon. But what’s with Hyland?


12 posted on 08/03/2009 9:59:23 PM PDT by EDINVA (A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul -- G. B. Shaw)
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To: deks
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2307909/posts

This has the vote info posted below.

13 posted on 08/04/2009 8:05:53 AM PDT by La Lydia
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To: La Lydia

Thank you :)


14 posted on 08/04/2009 11:56:17 AM PDT by deks (Obama Birthplace National Monument http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2169571/posts (:)
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