A federal panel wants a Saudi school inside the Beltway shut for promoting hate, something we've urged for years. But remarkably, this madrassa still has powerful backers. The Washington Post rebuked the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom for singling out the academy in a report criticizing Saudi Arabia for promoting religious intolerance in schools it runs around the world.As we've reported in these pages, the Alexandria, Va.-based Islamic Saudi Academy is a breeding ground for terrorists, including the al-Qaida operative convicted last year of trying to assassinate President Bush. The commission has asked the State Department to close the school pending a thorough review of its curriculum and texts. State has broad discretion over the school because, as an arm of the Saudi government, it's subject to the Foreign Missions Act.
The Post editorialists called the move "irresponsible." First, they tried to compare the madrassa to parochial schools. "Many such schools teach what outsiders might consider intolerance: that homosexuality is a sin, for example, or that only those who believe in Jesus Christ are destined for heaven," they said. Then they argued that there's no proof the Saudi academy has cross the lines of intolerance into "advocating violence."
"The commission presented no evidence, or even a credible suggestion, that this is occurring at the Saudi academy," the Post editorial board opined. "Thus it was the commission that crossed the lines." But evidence has been presented in the very pages of the Post. If only the paper's higher-ups would read the copy of their news reporters.
Take the Feb. 25, 2002, Post story headlined, "Where Two Worlds Collide; Muslim Schools Face Tension of Islamic, U.S. Views." It noted that numerous textbooks used by the Islamic Saudi Academy promote "hatred of non-Muslims and Shiite Muslims."
"The 11th-grade textbook, for example, says one sign of the Day of Judgment will be that Muslims will fight and kill Jews, who will hide behind trees that say: 'Oh Muslim, Oh servant of God, here is a Jew hiding behind me. Come here and kill him,' " the article said. It goes on to quote several students of the school 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, who recited by memory parts of the Quran, told the Post he's taught by academy teachers that it's OK for Muslims to hurt or steal from such "kaffirs."
This was the steady diet of hate that the Saudi academy fed Ahmed Abu Ali, the would-be al-Qaida assassin. Lest anyone think he was a misfit loner, Ali graduated valedictorian and was voted by his class "Most Likely to Be a Martyr," which in this jihadist school is like being voted Most Popular.
Why is this militant madrassa still operating just across the Potomac from the White House and Capitol? Because Fairfax County is still leasing it an old high school building, and the Democrat county supervisor in charge of the lease doesn't see any problem with the school. The supervisor recently took a tour of the campus and "was reassured by what he saw in the English materials," the Post editorial said. What about the Arabic texts? He doesn't read Arabic. But the Saudi Embassy, which controls the school, assures him they're clean.
The nonprofit Freedom House recently translated a sample of those cleaned-up official Saudi texts and found they're still indoctrinating students to wage jihad against the infidel to "spread the faith." Here's what an eighth-grade Saudi text teaches — with the intolerant parts removed: "The apes are Jews, the people of the Sabbath; while the swine are the Christians, the infidels of the communion of Jesus."
In short, nothing has really changed in Saudi texts or schools — nor in Washington, which is still blindly tolerating intolerance.