Connecting the Dots

by Bill Wilson
KIN Senior Analyst

The Fairfax, Va., board of supervisors has unanimously renewed the lease of county land and facilities to a flagship Saudi school that is highly suspected of teaching and promoting terrorist fundamentalism to some 900 students from kindergarten through high school within a few minutes of our nation's capital.

Supervisor Gerald Hyland, a liberal Democrat, said he didn't have the impression that the Islamic Saudi Academy was ">doing anything other than teaching young children in a fashion that is to be an example to others."

Hyland, who reviewed the school's curriculum, did not say what type of example the school was trying to teach.

Hyland, however, copped Islamic dualism by qualifying his statement: "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 some concern."

The U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom recommended last October that the State Department shut down the school because it was thought to be teaching hatred against Jews and Christians and advocating violence.

Of course, the director-general of the academy denies that its textbooks contain such information. He may be correct, as the only book that needs to contain that information is the Islamic holy book, the Koran. And he would not consider the Koran a textbook.

Nina Shea of the Commission on Religious Freedom was quoted as saying that the problem is far deeper. She said, "We are very concerned, on a partial review of the Saudi Academy textbooks, about some passages that instruct that 'jihad' is 'the pinnacle of Islam,' that speak about impunity for murders of 'polytheists' or non-Wahhabis, that legitimize the murder of Muslim 'apostates' and that state the lives of only those non-Muslims living or working under Muslim rule are inviolable."