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Feds: Islamic school condones violence
A Saudi-funded school has denied federal claims that its textbooks condone violence against apostates, adulterers, and polytheists. But the protesters who gathered outside the school yesterday are unconvinced.
The Virginia-based Islamic Saudi Academy came under scrutiny last year, when the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended the school close until investigators could ensure the Saudi government kept its 2006 promise to excise any textbook passages promoting violence.
The school and Saudi embassy failed to give the Commission textbook copies and the State Department still declines to release the textbooks to the public. But the panel collected 17 textbooks containing passages that justify intolerance, violence and murder.
For example, a twelfth-grade textbook on Koranic interpretation says it’s permissible for a Muslim to kill an apostate, an adulterer or someone who has intentionally murdered a believer. A textbook on monotheism says “major polytheism” (polytheists include Shi’a Muslims, Sufi Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists) makes “blood and wealth permissible,” meaning that Muslims can take a polytheist’s life and property. The textbooks also contain expressions of intolerance towards Jews, Shi’a Muslims, Baha’i adherents and Ahmadis.
A statement from the Academy counters that the report is “erroneous” and examines “mistranslated and misinterpreted texts, and references to textbooks that are no longer in use at the Academy.” The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors conducted an earlier examination of the textbooks and said they found no serious problems before unanimously deciding to extend the school’s lease.
Shortly before the Commission’s report became public, the school’s director Abdall I. Al-Shabnan, was arrested and charged with obstructing justice for not reporting the claims of a 5-year-old girl said her father was sexually abusing her. According to police reports, Al-Shabnan believed the girl was lying, told her parents to get her counseling, and ordered school officials to delete a written report from the school’s computer.
The Commission is calling for the public release of all textbooks and urging the State Department to create a formal mechanism to monitor the Saudi’s commitment to revise the books.
back to top15 Comments to “Feds: Islamic school condones violence”
I’m not sure why we continue to trust that the wrong kind of ideas will not get taught in a Muslim school.
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“But … but the Saudi’s are our friends!”
“The security of Saudi Arabia is a vital national interest, worth going to war and shedding American blood over, if necessary!”
How are these two ideas compatible with the existence of a violence-teaching Saudi school so near our nation’s capital?
Answer: It is not. Saudi Arabia should defend itself, and America shouldn’t permit a school to teach these kinds of ideas.
“But what is the difference between what some of this school’s textbooks teach and a Christian school that teaches, for example, that convicted murderers should be executed?”
Answer: Christianity is true. Islam is not.
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Say it ain’t so!
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The ISA, nicknamed ‘Terror High’ by the Philadelphia Daily News, produced a valedictorian in 1999 who was indicted on terrorism charges.
I don’t understand why ISA teachings are not common knowledge. Why does it take a federal study to determine whether a school’s textbooks teach intolerance and murder? How can the school refuse to make its materials available?
But we have a far greater problem. America is powerless to do anything about it! What laws will prevent a private religious school from teaching whatever it wants? Freedom of religion and speech are powerful ideals, but gives unlimited leeway to those plotting our overthrow.
We have solid irrefutable documentation that mosques and schools all around the country preach the violent overthrow of America. Islamic summer camps teach children to hate and fight the ‘infidels’. Please see the documentary ‘Jihad in America’ by Stephen Emerson. But no one cares.
The solution is NOT to do what the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom proposed in October 2007, which urged the US State Department to shut down the ISA on the grounds it teaches religious intolerance. That strikes at the heart of religious freedom. Before you know it churches will be shut down around the country for saying sin is bad.
The solution is information and lots of it. The solution is public exposure of what is being said in mosques and madrassas. The solution is knowledge. Embarrassment and exposure keeps skinheads and the KKK in the shadows. It will work on Islamic radicals also.
However, the most bizarre thing imaginable is happening, i.e. a national moratorium on any speech critical of the teachings of Islam. In a society that values freedom of speech and public safety, this is beyond comprehension!
Our desire to be tolerant surpasses our desire to prevent terror.
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Every time, we fill up our Tanks with gasoline from oil imported from Saudi Arabia, we help fund this stuff.
I have said it once and will say it again, Energy is a National Security Issue. As much as I really dislike Joe Biden, I have to agree with his statement that we as a nation, must shed our dependence on oil period.
Take away the Saudi Money then they cannot fund schools like this.
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The solution is not to grant Gitmo detainees Constitutional protections either. This stuff should be common knowledge, but apparently the wish to be “tolerant” supersedes common sense these days.
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Here is the root of all of the problems we will have with Islam in the next century:
If we cannot name our enemy, we can never defeat it.
The enemy has a name.
Muslims are not the enemy. The enemy is Muhammad’s ideology of hate that is taught in schools and mosques generation after generation. But we are powerless to even mention it let alone combat it.
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Frank in Phoenix,
Most of the Saudi military I saw were woefully inept. Think of the keystone kops where everyone is a cousin and all are slovenly, obese and move/work as if they are paid hourly.
The Saudi princes don’t want a big powerful professional military for fear of a Gamal Abdel Nasser coming along to give them the King Faroukh heave ho.
The phrase “violence against polytheists” is that code word for Jihad against Hindus? Against those who recognize a Triune God??
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#5 I have to admire Sen McCain for this reason if no other. He said it out loud: “The problem is we are buying oil and giving vast sums of money to people who hate us and want to destroy us.”
My understanding is the House of Saud paid out money to the Islamic purist zealots to keep the fanatics from trying to overthrow the Saudi monarchy.
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The only hope for the Saudi people is if they lead a revolt against the Religious Police and the Extremists in their midst. I am not optimistic in this. The reason is that many of the Saudi National Guard are members or at the very least sympathizers with Al Qeada.
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15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia.
Yes, the same Saudi Arabia country that Bush visited earlier this year.
He also agreed to sell them military equipment.
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ZZZZZZ, Nick, your Bush hatred is getting old.
To free ourselves from the Saudi’s, we should start drilling in ANWAR/The Rockies/Gulf Coast and begin building nuclear power plants ASAP.
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outkast (6): The solution is not to grant Gitmo detainees Constitutional protections either.
Frank: Ensuring that detainees receive some manner of due process — e.g., Do we have evidence justifying a detention or do we not? — has nothing to do with either political correctness/diversity in general, nor the existence of a Saudi school with textbooks advocating violence in particular.
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Frank: My point stands, because both situations show how our “toleration” for extremists ultimately leads to our downfall.
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outkast (14): My point stands, because both situations show how our “toleration” for extremists ultimately leads to our downfall.
Frank: Your point would only stand if it were known that every detainee in US custody is, in fact, an extremist. Numerous reports from a variety of sources indicate that that was hardly the case.
In one instance, we detained an Afghan who was guarding an US military fuel facility after a personal enemy of his turned him in for the $1,000 bounty we were offering for terror suspects.
That “suspect,” as I understand it, has since been released. Does that frighten/anger you?
But more to the point, how can it possibly lead to our “downfall” for a detainee to be allowed to challenge his detention via habeas corpus?
If the government provides evidence to the judge supporting the detention, the system works — the suspect remains detained.
But if there isn’t any evidence to support the detention …
… why on earth should we continue holding him?
If you were unjustly imprisoned, I doubt you would consider habeas corpus to be merely a matter of “toleration.”
You’d probably think it was all about justice.
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