Jawdropper of the Week: Islamic Saudi Academy Will Stay Open
Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 3:40:45 pm PDT
They’re teaching children to hate and kill Jews and Christians.
A former school valedictorian, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was convicted of joining Al Qaeda and plotting to assassinate President Bush.
And they’ve been spreading this radical Islamic ideology in the US for decades.
But the State Department has no plans to close the Islamic Saudi Academy in Fairfax, Virginia.
Because they promised to change their textbooks.
State Department officials said Thursday they have no plans to close a Saudi-financed Islamic school in Northern Virginia that has failed to eliminate violent and intolerant language in textbooks.
“They told us they would revise the textbooks by the 2008 school year,” State Department spokesman Rob McInturff said. “We don’t plan to take additional action apart from the discussions that have been going on with the Saudi government.”
Results released Wednesday from a federal investigation into the Islamic Saudi Academy - with campuses in Alexandria and Fairfax - found textbooks at the 900-student private school had passages that blame the Jews for “discord” and say it is sometimes permissible to kill non-Muslims.
The investigation by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom focused on 17 textbooks used during the last school year and obtained from independent sources. The panel, formed by Congress, last year recommended the State Department close the school, though members had not yet reviewed the textbooks. The commission said the Foreign Missions Act gives the Secretary of State authority to “require a foreign mission to divest itself of or forgo the use of property and to order it to close.”
State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos on Thursday cited the Saudi government’s 2006 acknowledgement of a need to revise its textbooks and agreement to do so “in time for the start of the 2008 school year,” which starts this fall.
