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From "Insurgent Islam and American Collaboration"
by James George Jatras, on Saudi islamic institutions in Virginia:

The cultural schism between the Western and Eastern halves of European Christian civilization marked principally by their respective religious traditions, Roman Catholic and Protestant in the West and Orthodox in the East, may or may not prove fatal. One issue stands above all others in determining the outcome: the Islamic resurgence that has rapidly come to mark the post-Cold War era. For the East, which borders on the Muslim world, the problem continues to be, as it has been since Islam first appeared in the seventh century, primarily one of direct, violent confrontation, which today stretches from the Balkans to the Caucasus, and throughout Central Asia. For the West, on the other hand, the problem today is primarily internal, a result of ideological confusion (which in many instances leads to active collaboration), coupled with demographic infiltration.

Last year, the county board of Loudoun County, Virginia, just a few miles down the road from the federal capital, granted a zoning variance, over vigorous local opposition, to facilitate the construction of a new Islamic academy. The institution is one of a number being constructed nationwide, and it will cover some 100 acres, include elementary, middle, and high schools, feature an 800-bed dormitory, and grace the rolling hills of the Virginia horse country with a 65-foot mosque dome and an 85-foot minaret.

County residents opposed the academy on a variety of grounds, notably the loss of tax revenue on land that was otherwise zoned for business uses and the security threat posed by the school, either from Muslims who would be attracted to the county or from the possibility that anti-Saudi Islamic groups might see the academy as a tempting target. But the critics' central issue--and the one that highlights Western incomprehension of the phenomenon in question--was the character of the Saudi regime, which, according to the school's bylaws, exercises total control, to the extent that the school is part of the structure of the Saudi Ministry of Education: an establishment of a foreign sovereign on American soil. Indeed, the Saudi ambassador is ex officio chairman.

Predictably, as soon as Saudi Arabia and Islam became the issues, progressive opinion responded that rejection of the school would be intolerance of "diversity." One county resident displayed a crescent and star in the window of her home to show symbolically that "Islam is welcome here." The ever-vigilant Washington Post weighed in with an editorial blasting opposition to the school as "religious intolerance" and "the worst kind of bigotry" on the part of retrograde denizens of the Old Dominion. "Ugly statements that have been made in public meetings on the issue have run the range of mean-spiritedness," sniffed the Post, "with some residents asserting that the school should be rejected because 'the Saudis execute their own people who convert from Islam.'"

In point of correction to the Post's sarcastic quotation marks, the 1997 U.S. Department of State Report on Human Rights Practices states the following about Saudi Arabia:

Freedom of religion does not exist. Islam is the official religion and all [Saudi] citizens must be Muslims. . . . Conversion by a Muslim to another religion is considered apostasy. Public apostasy is considered a crime under Shari'a law and punishable by death.

So which is more "ugly" and "mean-spirited"--the fact that the Saudis do indeed behead those who abandon Islam or that Loudoun citizens have been tactless enough to take note of that fact? One witness before the county board testified that her daughters, who are U.S. citizens, have been prevented from leaving Saudi Arabia for over 13 years because, as women, they may not travel, even though the elder one is now an adult, without their Saudi father's permission. The girls have been forcibly converted to Islam and can only look forward to their eventual marriage, for which their consent is at best a formality.

Fawning by Loudoun County authorities extended even to a blatant disregard of the county's own laws. A Loudoun ordinance defines a private institution as one that is neither funded nor controlled by any government: On both counts, the Loudoun Islamic academy falls. Yet the county board rejected testimony by a former board member-the author of the relevant ordinance--that the academy was not a private institution. No matter. Today, neither Loudoun County, nor the Commonwealth of Virginia, nor the United States would be able to create and run an educational institution based on any religious doctrine. But a foreign government-a government that is every bit as bigoted, intolerant, and ugly as the Post wrongly accused the school's critics of being-may do so.

Especially illuminating in the Loudoun controversy was the position of local Christian social conservatives, who stayed neutral or even supported the academy. In the dimmer recesses of the American Christian mind, the only concern was what precedent denying the variance might set for private Christian schools, or the availability of public vouchers. The importation of Shari'a into a once-Christian commonwealth seemingly registered not at all in evangelical minds blissfully unaware of Islamic aims. But as Bat Ye'or wrote in The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam,

The Islamist movement makes no secret of its intentions to convert the West. Its propaganda, published in booklets sold in all European Islamic centers for the last thirty years, sets out its aim and the methods to achieve them. They include proselytism, conversion, marriage with logical women, and, above all, immigration [emphasis added]. Remembering that Muslims always began as a minority in the conquered countries ("liberated," in Islamic terminology) before becoming a majority, the ideologists of this movement regard Islamic settlement in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere as a chance for Islam.