June 25, 2008 at 3:28 am | Posted in Shariah | Leave a comment
Tags: American Congress for Truth, Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, Gerry Connolly, Islamic Saudi Academy, RNCC news release, slam of Connolly for flip flopping
by Jerry Gordon, American Congress for Truth
Yesterday we noted in a post that oine of inevitable consequences of the yesterday’s 180 degree reversal by Chairman Gerry Connolly of the Fairfax County (Virginia) Board of Supervisors on the renewal of the lease for the controversial Islamic Saudi Academy, was that he would become fair game for his GOP political opponent in the Virginia District 11 U.S. House race.
Well, as night follows day that’s what occurred today. The Republican National Congressional Committee issued a press release slamming Connolly for his ‘flip flop’ on the ISA lease renewal decision.
Below is the RNCC news release containing excerpts from the May 19th hearing on the ISA lease renewal versus Connolly’s comments at yesterday press conference at the Fairfax County Center. Looks like Connolly has been hoisted on his own petard-his own words. These sound bites will doubtless find their way into political flyers and campaign advertisements by Connolly’s GOP opponents. Read these excerpts. Again they make Connolly and his fellow Fairfax County Board of supervisors look both foolish and arrogant. What did the fictional character Forest Gump say: “stupid is as stupid does.”
For Immediate Release:
Contact: Press Office
June 24, 2008
Connolly Flip-Flops on Saudi School After Giving a Full-Throated Defense of “Terror High,” Connolly Now Calls for Investigation after Feeling Political Pressure
Washington – Gerry Connolly, the Democratic Chairman of the Board of Supervisors for Fairfax County and Democratic candidate for Virginia’s 11th Congressional District, suddenly reversed his position and turned on the Islamic Saudi Academy yesterday, as he asked for the State Department to investigate the school. The school has come under harsh criticism from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a panel appointed by the U.S. Congress, over the last year for the high potential of spreading anti-American teachings to its students. This past week, the head of the academy was arrested on obstruction of justice charges with regards to a child abuse case.
According to the Associated Press, Gerry Connolly supported the school just last month, when their lease was up for an extension:
“Protesters also criticized the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors for voting unanimously last month to extend the school’s lease. County officials conducted their own review of the textbooks and said they didn’t find any
serious problems.
“The board’s chairman Gerry Connolly, the Democratic nominee for Congress in Virginia’s 11th District offered a strong defense of the school and accused critics of slander during the meeting in which the lease was approved.” (AP, 06/17/2008)
At the meeting on May 19, 2008, Gerry Connolly specifically said, “I find no evidence, no grounds, to do anything but to renew the lease of an institution that has been a good neighbor.”
But now, Gerry Connolly is singing a different tune:
“Fairfax County leaders asked U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday to determine whether the county should continue leasing property to the Islamic Saudi Academy following controversy surrounding the school’s teachings.
“With unanimous support from the county’s Board of Supervisors, Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D) sent a letter to Rice ‘formally requesting’ that the State Department provide direction regarding the county’s one-year lease renewal, approved last month, with the Saudi Arabian government for operation of the academy.” (Washington Post, June 24, 2008)
“Gerry Connolly’s change of heart seems to come at an opportune time,” said NRCC Press Secretary Ken Spain. “After giving a full-throated defenseof the school and accusing critics of ’slander’, it appears that Gerry Connolly is buckling under political pressure. Its hard to figure out what is worse, a public official who is incapable of standing by the courage of his convictions or one who has incredibly bad judgment.”
Gerry Connolly’s latest flip-flop on such an emotional issue shows that he is willing to do and say anything to get elected. Virginia’s voters shouldsee this as nothing more than a political stunt.
###
Paid for by National Republican Congressional Committee.
Not Authorized by Any Candidate or Candidate’s Committee.
www.nrcc.org
June 25, 2008 at 3:23 am | Posted in Shariah | Leave a comment
Tags: Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, Islamic Saudi Academy, letter to US State Department to investigate, reverse decision, USCIRF ISA hate text report
Last night, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors decided to ask the State Department to “investigate” the textbooks in use at the Islamic Saudi Academy of Virginia before a final decision whether to continue leasing public land to the school. Some are celebrating that decision as a “reversal” and a “victory,” but it is not. Actually, the Board cynically wimped out, refusing to accept the obvious evidence already presented by an independent commission of the federal government, and punted the whole issue away from that agency to the State Department. Surely the Board knew, as any of us who have followed this issue, that State will continue to do what it has done for years on this issue – nothing.
I last posted on this issue on June 12, in which I laid out how the ISA is a case study in homegrown radicalization, applying criteria developed by the New York Police Department, citing the new report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, and recalling the ISA’s most famous valedictorian, convicted terrorist Ahmed Omar Abu Ali. The examples cited in the report of the anti-Israeli and pro-Wahabbist textbooks in use at the school are painfully obvious: “The cause of the discord: The Jews conspired against Islam and its people. A sly, wicked person who sinfully and deceitfully professed Islam infiltrated (the Muslims)… Only through force and victory over the enemies is there security and repose. Within martyrdom in the path of God (exalted and glorified is He) is a type of noble life-force that is not diminished by fear or poverty.” And recall what the USCIRF report says about the Saudis’ continued deceit in hiding the textbooks from official U.S. government review:
“In every official meeting during the visit to Saudi Arabia, the Commission delegation asked Saudi interlocutors for copies of textbooks. The Saudi government’s refusal to make them available during that visit or after the Commission’s return, despite repeated requests, left the Commission with continued concerns about their content and serious questions about whether they were in fact being reformed. The Commission also sought to obtain the textbooks used at the ISA…While neither the ISA nor the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia complied with the Commission’s requests to release the school’s books publicly, the Commission did obtain some Arabic-language books currently used in the twelfth grade and a random selection of texts currently used in middle and high school classes. The Commission’s review of these textbooks found that they did contain passages justifying violence toward, and even the killing of, apostates and so-called polytheists. The texts also include highly intolerant passages about non-Sunni Muslims, such as Shi’a, Ismailis, and Ahmadis, and non-Muslims, such as Jews and Baha’is…
However, the books reviewed by the Commission in the winter of 2007-2008 show evidence of truncation, omission, cutting and pasting, and the use of correction tape or fluid to cover over text—but not sufficient revision to remove all objectionable material, as evidenced by the passages cited above. They appear to be Saudi Ministry of Education textbooks, with some alterations but with identical wording in many sections of the texts.”
I would remind the county supervisors that USCIRF was created in 1998 by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. So the investigation they want has already been conducted by an official agency of the U.S. government. There is nothing left to prove.
What we have here is a failure of leadership. The State Department has done nothing about these books over the past five years, and the Fairfax County supervisors know it. The county supervisors contracted for a secret, special report, have not released it to this day, and won’t take obvious action. I repeat what I posted on June 12: The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors should revoke the lease and force the school to leave public property.
The ISA incubator of homegrown radicalization operates unabated. May God protect the good people of Fairfax County, because their elected supervisors apparently will not.
June 21, 2008 at 1:09 pm | Posted in Shariah | 1 Comment
Tags: Bella Rabinowitz, FrontPageMagazine, ISA website, Islamic Saudi Academy, Joe Kaufman, opinion, USCIRF ISA text book report
by Joe Kaufman and Beila Rabinowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, June 20, 2008
In Saudi Arabia, teaching hatred for others is a normal everyday scholastic activity. But what happens when that teaching gets transferred to the United States? One children’s school with branches in Virginia, the Islamic Saudi Academy, has managed to accomplish this with hate-filled texts, a terror-linked website, and students and school personnel that have been involved in radical activity.
The Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA), an institution run by the government of Saudi Arabia, has been occupying northern Virginia, since 1984. Within the state, it has two facilities, one in Fairfax (pre-K – first grade) and one in Alexandria (grades 2 – 12). The school offers all of the standard curriculum: Math, English, Social Studies, Science, etc. However, what has been of concern to many is the group’s religious studies.
In October of 2007, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an organization established by the United States Congress, issued a press release calling for the closure of ISA, until the school’s textbooks would be made available to it for inspection, which they were not. The release stated that “significant past documented concerns remain about whether what is being taught at the ISA explicitly promotes hate, intolerance and human rights violations, in some cases violence.”
The concerns of the commission were based on previous findings regarding Saudi curricula, which showed that Saudi authorized school textbooks encouraged violence and theft, even religiously sanctioned murder, against a variety of non-Muslim groups.
In July of 2006, the Saudi government released a statement, saying that it would, within one or two years, “revise and update textbooks to remove remaining references that disparage Muslims or non-Muslims or that promote hatred toward other religions or religious groups.” But without having the material in front of it, the commission was not able to determine if the Saudis were indeed abiding by their own commitments.
Between USCIRF’s first action and now, the commission has been able to acquire and review 17 current ISA textbooks for examination, and the findings have been disturbing to say the least. According to USCIRF, some of the passages in the texts “clearly exhort the readers to commit acts of violence.” These acts include the killing of apostates (converts from Islam) and the taking of the lives and property of Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and those adhering to the Shiite faction of Islam.
In addition, according to the commission, the reviewed texts “show evidence of truncation, omission, cutting and pasting, and the use of correction tape or fluid to cover over text – but not sufficient revision to remove all objectionable material.” As well, some of the material was altered but contained “identical wording.”
Besides the textbooks, the ISA’s website has set off alarms. From March of 2000 through August of 2001, the site had a link to IslamiCity, a website that repeatedly calls for the murder of Jews and repeatedly “curses” Jews and Christians. Some statements from IslamiCity include:
- “May Allah curse the Jews and Christians for they built the places of worship at the graves of their Prophets.”
- “The Jews will fight with you, and you will be given victory over them so that a stone will say, ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew behind me; kill him!’”
- “The Jews are being punished in their graves.”
From March of 2000 through February of 2002, ISA’s website contained a link to Islam Question and Answer, a site authored by Saudi radical Muhammed Salih Al-Munajjid, which stresses violence against non-Muslims and others. Some quotes from it include:
- “There cannot be harmony between Jews – who are usurpers and aggressors, who have oppressed and persecuted others, and who are known for their treachery and corruption throughout the world, historically and in the present age… As the Muslims and Jews are enemies residing in opposing religious and doctrinal camps, it is not possible for them to be brought together unless one is made to submit to the other by force.”
- “There is no doubt that it is prescribed to engage in jihad against the enemies of Allaah, Jews and others, with our lives and our wealth. That includes every means that will weaken their economy and cause them harm… The Muslims in general should cooperate in righteousness and piety and help the Muslims in all places in ways that will lead them to prevail and strengthen them and enable them to manifest the symbols of religion, to practise the teachings of Islam and to implement the rulings of sharee’ah and carry out hudood punishments, and whatever will lead to their victory over the kuffaar, Jews, Christians and others.”
- “The Sahaabah were unanimously agreed on the execution of homosexuals, but they differed as to how they were to be executed. Some of them were of the view that they should be burned with fire… And some of them thought that they should be thrown down from a high place then have stones thrown at them… Because the evil consequences of homosexuality are among the worst of evil consequences, so its punishment is one of the most severe of punishments in this world and in the Hereafter.”
Today, the above ISA web links have been replaced by new extremist links. Beginning in August of 2002, ISA’s website linked to Al-Islam, a site run by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowments, Da‘wah and Guidance. The site, similar to the previous mentioned sites, propagates hatred against Jews and Christians. Al-Islam includes such brutal pleas as: “Let there be curse upon the Jews and the Christians…” and “May Allah the Exalted and Majestic destroy the Jews.”
As well, entire web pages on Al-Islam are devoted to fighting jihad – jihad, which the site defines as “holy war.” The index for the site’s ‘Al-Jihad’ section is as follows:
- The superiority of Jihad and moslem warriors (Mujahideen)
- Judgment concerning Jihad
- Staying behind from battles
- Characteristics of Mujahideen
- Elements of the battle
- Stages of battles
- Booty and Al-Fai
- Pledges and covenants
Another website that ISA currently links to is Arab News, a site that labels the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), the former American propaganda wing of Hamas, as “Palestinian[s] who believe in the liberty of [sic] there holyland” and describes Radio Islam, a site that publishes Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as “[sic] Informations about Zionism and Palestine.”
Furthermore, according to the school’s website, from 2000 to 2001, the 9th and 10th grade ISA curriculum included learning about “the reform of Mohammed Bin Abdulwahab and his alliance with the Saudi family, who united the Arabian Peninsula during the first half of the 20th century.” Bin Abdul Wahhab was the individual from which Wahhabism was created, arguably the movement that ignited the terrorist threat faced by the world today.
Between the textbooks and the websites, ISA students could get quite an education in hatred and violence, two subjects that young children should not be exposed to, especially kindergarteners. Unfortunately, though, it seems that at least some of the ISA students took these vicious lessons to heart.
Ahmed Omar Abu Ali was 1999 class valedictorian at ISA. In an act of foreboding, his class named him “Most Likely to Be a Martyr.” Foreboding, because, in November of 2005, he would be convicted of joining Al-Qaeda and plotting to assassinate President Bush. He received a 30 year prison sentence for his crime.
As stated in an FBI criminal complaint, ISA graduates Mohammed Osman Idris and Mohammed Hassan El-Yacoubi, in December of 2001, were on their way to Israel, for what seemed to be a suicide mission. El-Yacoubi, during a search that was conducted by El Al security personnel, was found to have had on his person a farewell letter from his younger brother, Abdalmuhssin, who himself had attended ISA. The letter was in Arabic, and according to writing experts, it contained language discussing an attack that was to be carried out against Israelis, possibly in relation to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
In August of 2002, Idris was sentenced to four months in jail for lying on a passport application.
And it’s not just the students. Ismael Selim Elbarasse is a former comptroller (accountant) for ISA. Elbarasse, named as a co-conspirator for the 2007 Holy Land Foundation (HLF) terror trial, has been described by the U.S. government as a “high-ranking” Hamas operative for his financial dealings with Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook. In August of 2004, Elbarasse was arrested, after police viewed his wife videotaping sensitive parts of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay Bridge from his vehicle.
Earlier this month, on June 9th, the Director General of ISA, Abdullah Al-Shabnan, was taken into custody for failing to report the alleged sexual abuse of a five-year-old ISA student. This, while protests have erupted over the school’s use of violent texts.
ISA is most certainly not the only Islamic facility to be teaching hatred and violence in America, but it is one that has been caught and exposed. Under pressure, the U.S. State Department has called on the school to reform its educational materials by August, but if history is any indicator, the school’s future will be no different than its past.
On September 11, 2001, terrorists coming from Saudi Arabia flew planes into our buildings causing death and destruction. This school, the Islamic Saudi Academy, in contrast, is evidence that Saudi Arabia is now attempting to destroy us from within.
Joe Kaufman is the Chairman of Americans Against Hate and the founder of CAIR Watch. Beila Rabinowitz is the Director of Militant Islam Monitor.
June 20, 2008 at 9:19 am | Posted in Shariah | Leave a comment
Tags: Andrea S. Lafferty, Islamic Saudi Academy, opinion, Saudi threat to education in US, Traditional Values Coalition
June 18, 2008
Andrea S. Lafferty
TVC News
Tom Clancy could not write it any better.
A school operated by the Saudi government, using materials from the Saudi Ministry of Education, sits clandestinely on a hill in Alexandria, Virginia without any markings but with a security force with the intensity of the one at Fort Knox. Called the Islamic Saudi Academy, even its sign out in front of the school and the Academy’s buses bear only the innocuous initials “ISA.”
A number of criminal activities have led federal and local law enforcement authorities to visit the academy which is in a former high school building leased since 1989 from Fairfax County by the Saudi Arabian Washington embassy—the lease signed by the Saudi Ambassador.
Sometimes they come with search warrants as the Fairfax County police did earlier this month when they seized computers and other files and arrested Mr. Abdullah Al-Shabnan Director General of the Islamic Saudi Academy, who was charged with failing to report a child abuse allegation and obstruction of justice, according to a police report about the June 9 arrest.
Mr. Abdullah Al-Shabnan Director General
of the Islamic Saudi Academy
One of the most famous ISA graduates is Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, an ISA valedictorian. Abu Ali, 27, grew up in the Washington suburb of Falls Church. He joined al-Qaida after traveling to Saudi Arabia to attend college in 2002.
As a member of a Medina-based al-Qaida cell, Abu Ali discussed numerous potential terrorist attacks, including a plan to assassinate President Bush and a plan to establish a sleeper cell in the United States. He is presently serving a 30 year sentence in a federal prison after a federal appeals court rejected his challenge to the conviction. The court also ordered his re-sentencing because it deemed the 30 year term insufficient for the seriousness of his crime.
AP photo/Maryland Dept of Transportation/
ChicagoTribune
Then there is the infamous ISA’s former finance officer whose favorite past time was photographing the support system under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Most Americans are familiar with this story although almost no one knew the connection to the Islamic Academy.
Ismail Elbarasse was taken into custody after police spotted his wife videotaping the Bay Bridge. He was a long term employee and an accountant at ISA. He was terminated by the Academy in 1998 — the same year he was jailed for refusing to cooperate with an investigation into the finances of the radical Muslim group Hamas.
Federal investigators say they believed the footage of the Bay Bridge was “reconnaissance and surveillance” for a possible terrorist attack, The Baltimore Sun reported. The images included close-ups of cables and support features “integral to the structural integrity of the bridge,” according to court papers. According to an affidavit filed for a search warrant of the couple’s Annandale, Va., home, investigators said they believe six other videotapes discovered in the car contained footage or images of the Bay Bridge and other structures or potential targets. During the investigation of Hamas financing and its relationship to Middle East terrorism, Elbarasse was jailed for refusing to testify in the case.
All Americans need to be concerned about home grown terrorism. This is not just an issue facing the citizens of Northern Virginia.
In May, a Minnesota television news crew was assaulted by officials at a Muslim school.
Officials at the charter school attacked a TV news crew yesterday that came to investigate whether the publicly funded institution complied with a state order to stop accommodating Islamic prayers and religious programs.
KSTP-TV in Minneapolis-St.Paul reported police are probing the incident at the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy in Inver Grove Heights, Minn., which is housed in the same building as a mosque and the Minnesota chapter of the Muslim American Society. The station said a photographer was injured while wrestling with two school officials over a camera.
In California, federal attorneys and agents, mounting a counterterrorism offensive in Lodi, saw a dark future for the Farooqia Islamic Center. They have alleged in court that the facility’s secret mission may have been to recruit and groom American Muslims for the jihad – the holy war against enemies of Islam.
In testimony at an immigration court hearing Aug. 9,2005, FBI agent Gary Schaaf compared the Lodi school to militant madrassahs – Muslim seminaries – in Pakistan: “Our investigation has come across information that the (planned Lodi) madrassah is part of a long-term plan … during which students would be spotted and assessed and maybe eventually be ready to commit acts of violence in the U.S.”
The Traditional Values Coalition is responding to the concerns of our member-churches by confronting this growing national crisis.
On May 19, 2008, Traditional Values Coalition testified against the lease renewal of the Islamic Saudi Academy and was berated by Gerry Connolly, the chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. As a TVC spokesman quoted from one of the textbook passages, Connolly attempted to shout him down and repeatedly yelled “Slander!” The board of supervisors voted unanimously to renew the lease with the Saudi Embassy. Most of the members of the Board of Supervisors have been endorsed by the Virginia Muslim Political Action Committee where Connolly has also been endorsed in his campaign for a seat in Congress.
On June 11, 2008, The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom released a report that the Saudi government’s academy, the Islamic Saudi Academy in Northern Virginia continues to use textbooks which “do not conform to international human rights norms” by exhorting the reader to violence. The USCIRF is a bi-partisan federal commission tasked with exposing severe violations of religious freedom around the world—established under the Clinton Administration.
Some material in the textbooks examined by the federal commission also promoted intolerance toward Jewish and other faiths. 
The authors of a 12th-grade text on Koranic interpretation state that apostates (those who convert from Islam), adulterers and people who murder Muslims can be permissibly killed.
Some material in the textbooks examined by the federal commission also promoted intolerance toward Jewish and other faiths.
The authors of a 12th-grade text on monotheism write that “(m)ajor polytheism makes blood and wealth permissible,” meaning that a Muslim can take with impunity the life and property of someone believed guilty of polytheism. According to the panel, the strict Saudi interpretation of polytheism includes Shiite and Sufi Muslims as well as Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists.
Then on June 17, 2008, Traditional Values Coalition led a protest demonstration in front of the Islamic Saudi Academy where Islamic school personnel attempted to intimidate us by videotaping the faces of each demonstrator as well as taking pictures of people from local churches who attended the demonstration.
This school is operated by the Saudi government. Just as an American school overseas teaches “American” curriculum such as the Revolutionary War, our Presidents and major holidays, this Saudi school teaches from the Saudi Wahabbist texts provided by the Saudi Ministry of Education.
Most of the 9-11 hijackers were Saudi nationals, educated in schools just like this one.
An earlier report stated that these Saudi texts have taught children that peaceful coexistence with so-called “infidels” is unattainable and that violence to spread Islam is not only permissible, but an obligation. It encourages violence toward others, and misguides the pupils into believing that in order to safeguard their own religion, they must violently repress and even physically eliminate the other.
From coast to coast, these Islamic schools all share a common bent toward the Wahabbi brand of Islam. Jihad and violence against “infidels” are matters of Islamic “faith” and its Shariah law. Denying that this material is taught at these schools is denying the whole basis for their creation by the Saudi government and for the millions of dollars the Saudis pour into their operation each year.
America must remain vigilant even as spokespeople for the school say they omitted these teachings years ago or federal agents are not good translators. American education is always intended to uplift the minds of the young and offer a hopeful approach to the future. This is not the intent or the result of the poisonous “education” being promoted in the Saudi madrassahs across America.
—————–
**The USCIRF has listed Saudi Arabia is one of the Countries of particular concern (CPCs) because Saudi Arabia engages in particularly severe violations of religious freedom. The term “particularly severe violations of religious freedom” means systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom, including violations such as a) torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; b) prolonged detention without charges; c) causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction or clandestine detention of those persons; or d) other flagrant denials of the right to life, liberty, or the security of persons. The CPC designation makes these countries subject to U.S. diplomatic and economic actions.
June 18, 2008 at 9:43 pm | Posted in Shariah | Leave a comment
Tags: Al Shabnan ISA director general, CNSNews.com, Islamic Saudi Academy, news, opinion, State Department, USCIRF ISA text book report, Washington Post, Washington Times
by Jerry Gordon, American Congress for Truth blog
There was a flurry of news articles on yesterday’s protest demonstration at the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) in Alexandria, Virginia. The Washington Post, entitled its version, “Group Says School Teaches “hate”, the Washington Times headlined theirs, “Islamic school draws fire”. Both pieces drew attention to the basis for protests, the Islamic hate texts revealed in the USCIRF report. The group of 15 protesters had signs that said:
Honk to Stop Islamic Terrorism;
This Saudi school is Anti-Semitic and Anti-Christian.
Andrea Lafferty, executive director of Traditional Values Coalition organized the ISA protest with participation by the United American Committee, Virginia Chapter, the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Security Policy (CSP) and Act! for America Virginia and Maryland volunteers.
Lafferty commented:
They’re free to come here and worship, but they are not free to come here and teach hate.
Christine Brim of the CSP said:
They don’t have a First Amendment right in this country to incite violence against other groups.
Rahima Abdullah, the ISA education director replied to these allegations:
That’s absolutely not true. What we teach here is love and and tolerance.
We have new books now and the ones the commission is talking about have been out of use for some time, and were misinterpreted, then.
But the focus of both articles was on the arrest and charging of the school director general, Abdalla Al-Shabnan with not reporting a claim of child abuse of a five year old pre-school student by a family member that required him to file an incident report under Commonwealth of Virginia law. As we have posted in the AP story, Al-Shaban neglected to file a report in a timely manner within 72 hours as prescribed by law. Further, he ordered the written report of incident deleted from a secretary’s computer thereby resulting in a charge of obstruction of justice. Al-Shabnan faces a hearing on August 1st. If convicted, he could face a possible 12 month jail sentence. As noted in the Washington Times :
Fairfax County Police searched school offices last month and seized computers, notebooks, student files and disks.
Neither Mr. Al-Shabnan or school officials would comment. Shabnan wasn’t returning calls.
It was left to the CNSNews.com account to question whether the ISA was cleaning up its act in a headline: “Islamic Saudi Academy Prepares “Clean” Books for Fall”.
‘Clean’ books on Wahhabi doctrine means expunging many elements of the canon of Islam, the Qu’ran, Hadiths, the sayings, and the Sira, the biography of Mohammed the Messenger of Allah, as well as, the basic elements of Shari’a Law the bedrock of Wahhabism. Seems to us there would be much left to read in the ISA Islamic studies course, if that were the case. The CNSNews.com report had several revelatory exchanges with school officials, State Department and USCIRF spokespersons.
Judth Ingraham, spokesperson for the USCRIF indicated that the State Department didn’t turn over textbooks that the Saudi Embassy had turned over to State and the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. The USCIRF had to resort to obtaining them from other sources, including Members of Congress. In 2006, the Saudi government said it would “revise and update textbooks to remove remaining refernces that disparage [Shia and other] Muslims or promote hatred towards other religions”.
CNSNews.com queried the State Department and got this bizarre response:
“Since they’re already made public [ on the Saudi Ministry of Education Web site] we don’t need to duplicate them on our web site or give them to ( the Commission) because they’ve already been put out in the public domain”.
Then the logical question was why did the USCRIF have to scramble and use other means to obtain these allegedly public documents. Typical State Department bafflegab.
A spokesman for ISA, a U.S. history teacher, David Kovalik was shown these wordings from an ISA textbook and agreed that they were offensive:
The cause of discord. The Jews conspired against Islam and its people. A sly, wicked person who sinfully and deceitfully professed islam infiltrated (the Muslims).
Kovalick’s response was:
Well, that is very anti-semitic and uh, wow, no but those don’t exist in our books.
I guess the CNSNews.com reporters forgot to ask Kovalick whether he could read Arabic. Because, he looks like a dhimmi engaging in pre-pacakgedtaqiyyah-religiously sanctioned dissimilitude to fool the ‘infidel’, us.
When State was questioned about its own investigation, the result was more bafflegab from their spokesperson.
We’re continuing to review the hard copy ones received, and we’re working with the Saudi government. But they are taking place. This is a priority, it’s not something that we’ve slipped under the rug.
Sounds like a Freudian slip to me.
Then an ISA official indicated that “the books will not include controversial subject matter” but will still teach Islam. That’s a virtual impossibility given the analysis of the canon of Islam by analysts like Bill Warner of the Center for the Study of Political Islam.
With doubtless tongue in cheek, USCIRF spokeperson, Ingram said:
If that’s true, we are working toward the same goal. Let’s start the school year off on the right foot, with ‘clean’ textbooks.
What was the famous cry of English Highwaymen of the 18th century confronting frightened stage coach passengers? Applied in this instance it would be ’stand and deliver’, ISA.
June 18, 2008 at 5:54 pm | Posted in Islamic Saudi Academy | Leave a comment
Tags: Dwight Bashir interview, Glen Beck Program, Islamic Saudi Academy, Islamist Textbooks, transcript, US CIRF
by Jerry Gordon, American Congress for truth blog
Last night on the Glen Beck Program, there was a segment devoted to a discussion of the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) textbook report by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). Beck’s guest for this segment was Dwight Bashir, senior policy analyst at the USCIRF. What follows is the transcript of that interview. Note that Beck indicated there would be a follow up on tonight’s program that dealt with yesterday protest at the Alexandria, Virginia campus of ISA. The demonstration was organized by Traditional Values Coalition with participation by the United American Committee Virginia Chapter and the ACT! for America Chapter and Maryland volunteers, Center for Security Policy and others.
Transcript of Glen Beck Program Interview with Dwight Bashir, senior policy analyst, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom
BECK: Well, I told you yesterday and about a year ago about the Islamic Saudi Academy. It`s a private school that teaches about 900 students in grades K through 12 in Virginia.
The school receives much of its funding from the Saudi government. That`s fantastic! And investigators claim it`s using textbooks that say you get an A-plus if you kill somebody.
When a school is using textbooks that say it`s permissible for Muslims to kill adulterers and converts from Islam, that the Jews conspired against Islam, that Muslims are permitted to take the lives and property of those deemed polytheist, which — then it might be time to draw a line in the sand, what do you say? Especially when it`s our damn sand.
Fortunately, protests against the school are raging now. Worst of all, the school`s director was arrested today for failing to report child abuse. Oh, and a past valedictorian is sitting in prison after being convicted of plotting to assassinate the president.
I don`t know why there`s a problem with this school. Just another day at class, kids.
Dwight Bashir is a senior policy analyst for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Dwight, first of all, this is — you are appointed by Congress, right?
DWIGHT BASHIR, U.S. COMMISSION FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: That`s correct. We`re appointed by Congress.
BECK: OK. All right. And you`re not out on a witch hunt and you don`t have a problem with Islam. Let`s get all this bull crap out of the way.
BASHIR: Absolutely not.
BECK: OK.
BASHIR: Our mandate is to monitor violations of freedom of religion and belief and to make recommendations for U.S. policy.
BECK: OK.
I brought this school up, I don`t know, a year ago, maybe two years ago, and said, what is in the textbooks? You guys have been doing the same thing.
I`m a clown on television. You guys are the Congress. You have the power of the Congress behind you.
You couldn`t get the textbooks until recently. It says all kinds of horrible things. This school tried to avoid the Congress by going to the State Department.
Is that right?
BASHIR: Well, actually, we`re a federally funded entity, but what happened here is that we actually went to Saudi Arabia about a year ago and met with the Saudi officials who told us that they had add revised their textbooks. We have been following this for years. And we asked for the textbooks, including those at the Islamic Saudi Academy, and inevitably, we never actually got copies of the books.
When we released the report last year that you`re referring to that said there were reports that there was intolerance and hatred and violence in the books based on previous reports, we went ahead and asked for the books again. And they never did send — give anything to us. But later, they gave them to the State Department and to Fairfax County, a local county that leases the property to the embassy of Saudi Arabia.
BECK: OK. This textbook is Wahabiism. This is the most extremist kind of nonsense out there. The State Department, everybody could make this thing go away, but nobody wants to, right?
BASHIR: Well, the thing here is that the embassy has the ability to do anything it wants with the textbooks here because the chair of the board is the Saudi ambassador. And the State Department has jurisdiction over this school because the Saudi government funds it, the property it`s on is leased by the embassy. And so the problem here is that the State Department has received the books that we had said we`re not able to get copies of for now eight months, and they haven`t made a review of those books public.
We`re calling for a review of the books, because what we were able to do is to get some copies from independent sources and from a congressional office. And what we found in a small fraction of these books was this kind of language that you refer to, the incitement to violence and the intolerance towards other religious groups and so on that`s still in there.
So they`ve taken some things out, but a lot of this bad stuff is still there. And we just want the State Department to make it clear what`s in there.
BECK: Dwight, thanks. We`ll follow up on this story hopefully again tomorrow and tell you more about the protests.
I`ve got to tell you, sometimes I sit here and I watch the news and I think, I`m watching the destruction of my own country by people who are supposed to be protecting us.
June 17, 2008 at 5:44 pm | Posted in Shariah | Leave a comment
Tags: Christine Brim-CSP, ISA tax status, Islamic Saudi Academy, opinion, SACS ac creditation, USCIRF ISA text book report, Washingtin Post accreditation article 2002
By Jerry Gordon, American Congress for Truth, blog
Christine Brim of the Center for Security Policy found a fascinating article from the Washington Post, circa, 2002, concerning the “withdrawal” of the embattled Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) from the prestigious Virginia Association of Independent Schools. According to the Washington Post, article:
Sources familiar with the decision said the Virginia accrediting agency became concerned that the school was not adhering to its standards on funding and governance and asked questions earlier this year. The association’s standards require that the governing board be independent, that the administration be stable and that funding not come primarily from a single source.
The Washington Post article further noted:
Sources said that the association’s board probably would have stripped accreditation from the school if it had not withdrawn, but that it had not met to discuss such a move.
The sources also said that some board members were concerned about aspects of the school’s curriculum. The Washington Post in January reported that some Islamic studies classes at the school use Saudi Arabian textbooks that promote hatred of other religions. However, the curricular concerns were not part of the questioning that led to the withdrawal, sources said.
It seems that the concerns about ISA hate texts and espousal of Wahhabi doctrine were in evidence back in 2002.
We have confirmed that the ISA is not on the roster of VAIS. See here.
If you go to the ISA website it states:
ISA is fully accredited with SACS (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools) and CITA (Commission for International and Trans Regional Accreditation). The ISA’ achieved SACS Standards and received re-accreditation. The Academy will also adhere to the Action Plan set forth to implement the recommendations by the SACS quality assurance team.
Note that the head of SACS accreditation back in 2002 said:
…he would be concerned if the [ISA]was teaching hatred.
With the release of the USCIRF report on the hate texts used in the current school academic year, shouldn’t SACS be concerned about this evidence of ISA teaching hatred?
To answer this question, I put a call into the Decatur, Georgia office of SACS and found that Mr. Bush had gone into ‘semi-retirement’ and was referred to the Virginia office. I posed concerns about what SACS would do in the wake of the release last week of the USCIRF report on the hate texts. The person who answered said that a ‘responsible officer’ would get back to me.
Equally troubling were the answers quoted in the Washington Post article by the spokesperson for the Saudi US Embassy , Nail Al-Jubeir, brother of the current Saudi Ambassador . Al-Jubeir, the Embassy spokesperson in 2002, said:
We don’t do the day to day running of the school.
The embassy views the school as independent because it runs its own affairs, though “it is part of the royal court”.
In a recent post on the ISA kerfuffle, we noted:
The ISA is closely related to the Saudi government. The chairman of the northern Virginia Saudi-sponsored school is the Royal Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. The lease with Fairfax County, just renewed for a term of two years, was executed and paid for by the Royal Saudi government. The annual lease payment is $2.2 million The federal Employer Identification Number used on the leasehold documents is that of the Saudi Embassy in Washington, DC.
Another revelation of seeming importance is the ISA tax status. The IRS as of this spring had no record of ISA paying taxes or of any filing of the required application to exempt it from paying taxes. Its FEIN (Federal Employer Identification Number) is registered to the “Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia”, according to the USCIRF.
The plot thickens as to what has been uncovered about ISA, the investigations will doubtless reveal more.
All triggered by the USCIRF report of hate texts used by ISA. Stay tuned for more.
June 16, 2008 at 7:21 pm | Posted in Abdullah Al-Shabnan, Connolly, Fairfax Board of Supervisors, Islamic Saudi Academy | 3 Comments
Tags: Abdalla Al-Shabnan, Fairfax Board of Supervisors, Gerry Connolly, Islamic Saudi Academy, Supervisor Gross, Supervisor Hyland
Islamic Saudi Academy Director Arrested for Obstruction of Justice
June 16, 2008
Fairfax, VA
On June 9th, Fairfax County Police arrested the Director General of the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA), Mr. Abdalla I. Al-Shabnan, on the charges of Obstruction of Justice without Force (VA Code 18.2-460). Charged and released on the same day, Mr. Al-Shabnan is out on his own recognizance as he awaits his first hearing at Fairfax County General District Court on August 1, 2008, at 9:30 a.m.
Mr. Al-Shaban’s arrest stems from an investigation into the ISA’s alleged failure to comply with State requirements for reporting child abuse. According to authorities, instead of reporting the child abuse, Mr. Al-Shabnan deleted the report, contacted the student’s parents, and recommended psychological counseling for the young victim. Mr. Al-Shaban’s June 9 arrest comes after a May 23rd police search of the ISA where they gathered evidence that has contributed to the charges against Mr. Al-Shabnan.
Years of Controversy Continue
The ISA has been at the center of controversy for many years. A 2007 United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) report recommended to the State Department to call for the closure of the school. The 2007 USCIRF report prompted a coalition of concerned grassroots organizations to request the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to delay the renewal of the ISA lease until a Federal investigation into the ISA was completed. During the May 19 Fairfax County Board of Supervisors hearing, County Supervisors dismissed concerns as slanderous, bigoted, and unfounded. During the course of the hearing, Gerald Connolly, Fairfax County Chairman and Democratic Candidate for the 11th Congressional District, apologized to Mr. Al-Shabnan for what he deemed slanderous accusations that impugned the integrity of the Islamic Saudi Academy.
Since that May 19 hearing, the Mr. Al-Shabnan has been arrested and the USCIRF has confirmed ISA textbooks justify murder as an Islamic right.
Only Supervisor Gross has responded to the issue, and she continues her support for the ISA, and its textbooks that contain passages filled with hate and incitement to violence. Chairman Connolly has yet to retract his apology to the ISA and Mr. Al-Shabnan. Supervisor Hyland has not yet commented on whether the texts cited in the USCIRF report are the similar to those he identified as “texts of concern” during his independent and undocumented investigation of the ISA.
These hateful passages remain despite a 2006 US State Department request for the ISA to remove all insensitive and offensive content from textbooks. The ISA’s non-compliance with the 2006 US State Department request has not been accounted for and raises concerns about what the ISA, as an extension of the Saudi government, considers offensive, and the level of accountability they have to their local hosts and Federal government.
Since the US Treasury Department still considers Saudi Arabia as one of the leading financiers of terrorism, and USCIRF reports identify Saudi Arabia’s education as filled with incitements to murder as a religious freedom, the US State Department has not commented as to whether they will extend this policy and allow Iran and North Korea to open official schools in the US as well.
The ISA has run afoul of Virginia law before in hiring a bus driver, Abdelrazeg Abdalla, who had a suspended license, seven traffic violations, a misdemeanor for kidnapping his wife and child at knife point, and a six month detainment by Homeland Security. Nevertheless, the ISA hired Mr. Abdalla as a bus driver. Mr. Abdalla, operating a faulty ISA, bus was responsible for a 2005 multi-car accident.
Additionally, the ISA winner of the superlative Most Likely to Be a Martyr, and 1999 class valedictorian, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, has been convicted on charges of terrorism and attempting to assassinate President Bush.
As a result for the a May 19 hearing, the ISA’s lease of Fairfax County property continues for another year, as the Board of Supervisors unanimously supports the ISA as a model school beyond reproach.
A video of the complete May 19 Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Hearing on the Islamic Saudi Academy can be found at: http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/cable/channel16/vod.htm
Select “Public Hearings” from the May 19 links.
Of Note:
42:58 Fairfax County Chairman Connolly charges of slander remarks
49:35 Supervisor Gross: Latin can be violent and Parochial Schools contain material as equally offensive as the ISAs.
1:02 Supervisor Hyland begins testimony about why and how they’re is no documentation on his investigation.
June 16, 2008 at 4:09 pm | Posted in Connolly, Fairfax Board of Supervisors | Leave a comment
Tags: Gerry Connolly, Islamic Saudi Academy
Mad For Madrassas
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 6/13/2008
Islamofascism: Saudi money buys a lot in Washington, even an extension of a lease to an Islamic school that graduates terrorists and teaches its students it’s OK to kill non-Muslims.
A federal panel wants the Islamic Saudi Academy inside the Beltway shut down for promoting hate, something we’ve urged for years. But remarkably, this madrassa still has powerful backers — including the State Department.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom last week released the results of a probe of the academy, which is financed and operated by the Saudi government. It found the school has failed to eliminate violent and intolerant language in textbooks.
The texts used at its main campus, located just across the Potomac in Alexandria, Va., contain passages that vilify Jews and proclaim killing non-Muslims is sometimes permissible.
Despite the failing grade, local government officials renewed the private school’s lease in an old public high school building. The Democrat county supervisor in charge of the lease doesn’t see any problem with the school or its texts.
In fact, Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerry Connolly reportedly dismissed critics of the Saudi academy as “bigots” as he accepted a check from the Saudi Embassy for another $2.2 million to extend its lease. Perhaps not coincidentally, Connolly is running as a Democrat for Congress. He hopes to fill the local seat of retiring Republican Tom Davis, whose district includes one of the fastest-growing Muslim populations in the country.
The commission that looked at the Saudi texts has turned to the State Department to close the academy. State can do this because as part of the Saudi government, the school is subject to the Foreign Missions Act. But the Washington Times says State plans to let the madrassa continue to operate. Why? The Saudis “told us they would revise the textbooks by the 2008 school year,” a spokesman said.
How foolish. The Saudis have been promising to reform their violent texts every year since 9/11. Yet they just pump more petrodollars into spreading their hateful Wahhabi propaganda here.
Within months of the attacks by 15 Saudi hijackers, the Washington Post reported the Saudi academy’s 11th-grade textbooks, for example, say one sign of the Day of Judgment will be that Muslims will fight and kill Jews, who will hide behind trees.
The Post went on to quote several students who say they are taught in Islamic studies that “it is better to shun and even to dislike Christians, Jews and Shiite Muslims.” One teen told the paper he’s taught by academy teachers that it’s OK for Muslims to hurt or steal from such “kafirs.”
This was the steady diet of hate the Saudi academy fed Ahmed Abu Ali, who joined al-Qaida after graduating and plotted to kill President Bush. Lest anyone think Ali was a misfit loner, he graduated valedictorian and was voted as the “Most Likely to Be a Martyr.”
As we’ve warned repeatedly on these pages, the Islamic Saudi Academy is a breeding ground for terrorists, operating just across the Potomac from the White House and Capitol. Who has the nerve to disregard Saudi money and influence and shut it down?
http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=298251045774844
June 16, 2008 at 4:00 pm | Posted in Islamist Textbooks | Leave a comment
Tags: American Textbook Association, Family Security Matters, History Alive!, Islamic Saudi Academy, Islamic Textbooks, Islamist Textbooks, Susan Douglass
June 14, 2008
Exclusive: Should Justice Dept. Investigate Violent Teachings at Islamic Saudi Academy?
The Editors
Results of an investigation by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom revealed this week that textbooks used at a private Islamic school in northern Virginia tell students it is allowable for Muslims to kill adulterers as well as Muslims who convert to another religion.
According to the AP article linked above, “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.
Just last year, the Commission recommended that the school be closed, although school officials deny that the academy promotes intolerance. Further, State Department officials said Thursday they have no plans to close the Saudi-financed school, even though it has failed to eliminate violent and intolerant language in textbooks.
Some believe the U.S. Attorney General should open an investigation into the teachings of violent tactics at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Fairfax County, Virginia and the role of the Board of Supervisors in “enabling” the academy’s operation, including the Traditional Values Coalition.
“This is an insult to American men and women risking their lives in the Middle East right now to fight this sort of poison,” said TVC Executive Director Andrea Lafferty. “We’re allowing a taxpayer-owned building to be used to indoctrinate the homicide bombers and terrorists of the future.”
This disturbing revelation comes on the heels of another recent study – this one by the American Textbook Association (ATA) regarding textbooks in public classrooms across the country. The study concluded that students reading certain texts were not getting the whole picture about the Middle East and Islam:
From what they read in history textbooks, students and teachers are not likely to grasp why the United States and its allies consider militant Islam an enemy. Students will not learn that broadly based Islamist factions sanction violence in countries all over the world. They will not grasp the connection between jihad and September 11. Students may read of extremists, militants, and “anti-coalition forces.” They will not realize that the “coalition” is in fact their nation, the United States, and its allies (notably the United Kingdom), and that “anti-coalition forces” are also known as Al Qaeda, insurgents, and suicide bombers. These labels make no connection to radical Islam. Even when textbooks link Islam directly to terrorism, the ways in which Islam is extreme or militant – and thereby of peril to the United States and West – remain unexplained and off the table.
FSM published the results of the ATA study earlier this year, which can be found here.
It’s bad enough that students in public schools are receiving a watered-down version of Middle Eastern history and information about Islam. What’s even worse is when students in the United States are being indoctrinated into Islamism under the guise of a religious education. The results of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s study should not be swept under the rug or defended under the guise of “multiculturalism.”
Does this school really affect the young minds taught there? In 2005, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, the academy’s 1999 valedictorian, was indicted on charges of providing material support to terrorists. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison after being convicted on charges that included plotting to assassinate President Bush.
Brought to you by the research staff and editors of FamilySecurityMatters.org. Feedback: editorialdirector@familysecuritymatters.org.
You can find this online at: http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.368/pub_detail.asp
COPYRIGHT 2008 FAMILY SECURITY MATTERS INC.
« Previous Page —
Next Page »
Yesterday we noted in a post that oine of inevitable consequences of the yesterday’s 180 degree reversal by Chairman Gerry Connolly of the Fairfax County (Virginia) Board of Supervisors on the renewal of the lease for the controversial Islamic Saudi Academy, was that he would become fair game for his GOP political opponent in the Virginia District 11 U.S. House race.
saudiwatch.wordpress.com 