Here is an update on the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA how cute) in Fairfax County, Virginia. This is an important matter for me because, in case you didn’t know, I live in Fairfax County, Virginia, and I do not like to read things like this or this. So now that a possible extremist school has been located, and I hear housewives and soccer coaches putting in their two cents to the AP in a blatant apologist article, I’m almost at a loss for words. Here’s the AP article:
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) – 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. [My Link - konservo]
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.
[...]
Robert at Jihad Watch comments:
It’s OK. The opposing soccer coach says they’re good guys. All is well.
(H/T – Jihad Watch)
4 Comments
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.
That’s his defense? The bloody Saudi Arabian educational system is precisely how we got into this mess in the first place — well, that and the various Cairene universities before the Egyptian government chased all the radicals to Saudi Arabia.
Couldn’t possibly be worse than the U.S. military industrial complex made up of the Christian cabal.
BTW – nice work, pee brain, for the screenshot of you talking to yourself at TP when I gave Israel the salute they oh-so deserve.
Don’t recall? Here it is:
[Cambio, Cambio, Cambio, try to stay on topic (don't worry, when I ban you, you'll know!) - konservo]
Cambio, you really do have a lot of time on your hands, do you?
Sergei,
Also, it wouldn’t even be that big of a deal if the school made their curiculum available. They are refusing to cooperate and now they’re surprised that people are getting suspicious!
Plus, one of their valedictorians did sorta, well, you know, join al-Qaida and plot to kill the President of the US and all… but hey, at least the opposing soccor coach says they’er cool!
3 Trackbacks
[...] The conviction of ISA-educated al-Qaida member was found to be constitutional and the home-grown terrorist who plotted to [...]
[...] Commission Finds Hatred In Northern Virginia’s Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) Islamic School As noted in the past, the Islamic Saudi Academy in Northern Virginia has been acting very suspiscious when asked about their curriculum. In fact, some members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom last year asked the U.S. State Department to shut down ISA Islamic school because school administrators refused to provide officials with school text books. Abdalla al-Shabnan, the ISA school’s director general, claimed that the school was being persecuted because of anti-Muslim prejudice. [...]
[...] When it comes to dealing with the Northern Virginia based Islamic Saudi Academy, a radical Saudi-funded Islamic school, Virginia Democrats Gerald Connolly and Gerald Hyland [...]