http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,365700,00.html
U.S. Commission Finds Troubling Texts at Virginia-Based Saudi Academy
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
McLEAN, Va. — Textbooks at a private Islamic school in northern
Virginia teach students that it is permissible for Muslims to kill
adulterers and converts from Islam, according to a federal
investigation released Wednesday.
Other passages in the school's textbooks state that "the Jews
conspired against Islam and its people" and that Muslims are permitted
to take the lives and property of those deemed "polytheists."
The passages were found in selected textbooks used during the 2007-08
school year by the Islamic Saudi Academy, which teaches 900 students
in grades K-12 at two campuses in Alexandria and Fairfax and receives
much of its funding from the Saudi government.
The academy has come under scrutiny from critics who allege that it
fosters an intolerant brand of Islam similar to that taught in the
conservative Saudi kingdom. In the review, the panel recommended that
the school make all of its textbooks available to the State Department
so changes can be made before the next school year.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a panel formed
by Congress, last year recommended that the school be closed amid
concerns that it promotes violence and too closely mimics the
conservative Saudi educational system.
The commission made its recommendation last year to close the school
even though it had not reviewed the textbooks. Now that some have been
reviewed, "we feel more confident that the potential problems we
flagged before really are there," said the commission's spokeswoman,
Judith Ingram.
School officials have long denied that the academy fosters
intolerance. It has acknowledged thatliph, the Arabic language and the
Sunni creed, and that Muslims have grown weak because of foreign
influence and internal divisions.
The commission's findings issued come a month after the Fairfax County
Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to extend the academy's lease
for its main campus, which sits on county property.
The county conducted its own study of the textbooks last year at the
request of Supervisor Gerald Hyland, whose district encomp***** the
academy.
Hyland and the county never released results of what they had found,
but Hyland said in approving the lease that he is comfortable with the
school's teachings, though he did so with a qualification.
"I would be less than frank if I didn't tell you that the curriculum
does contain references to the Quran, which, if taken out of context
and read literally, would cause come concern," Hyland said at the
meeting at which the lease was extended.
|
