Calls to shut Saudi-sponsored school

Washington: US State Department Urged to Shut Saudi School in Fairfax

A federal panel yesterday urged the State Department to shut down a Saudi government-supported private school in Northern Virginia unless it can prove it is not teaching religious intolerance.

In a report released yesterday, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom criticized what it called the promotion of religious extremism in Saudi-run schools around the world, including in the kingdom. It leveled particular criticism at the Islamic Saudi Academy, which operates two campuses in Fairfax County, expressing "significant concerns" that the school is promoting a brand of religious intolerance that could prove a danger to the United States.

I find it interesting that when the government panel began their accusations that the school promoted a "radical" curriculum, the school's principal had this to say:

I think they went to Saudi Arabia and saw some curriculum there and thought we are teaching the same curriculum...

There is virtually no attempt to deny that "radical" textbooks do indeed exist in the heartland whose official religion the same article goes on to describe as "...a rigid strain of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism".