Why is the Saudi-funded school covering up sex abuse allegations and using textbooks that incite students to violence?
The Islamic Saudi Academy in Fairfax County, Virginia, is funded by the Saudi government and operates as an arm of the Saudi Embassy. It has been in the news this week following a report issued by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which found that textbooks used by the academy are filled with incitements to violence and racial and religious bigotry.
Missing in most of the national establishment media coverage of the story, however, is the raid on the school last month by state authorities after academy officials failed to report a five-year-old student’s claims of sex abuse by a parent and later attempted to eliminate any traces of the report.
According to a local news report [video] on June 3, the female student reported her claims to her teachers, and a report on the matter was drawn up by the teachers and the school’s principal and submitted to administrators. But when the allegations reached the desk of school director Abdullah Al-Shabnan, he didn’t believe the girl and failed to report the sex abuse claims to law enforcement within the 72 hours required by state law.
Apparently tipped off on a cover-up, law enforcement authorities raided the school on May 23 to seize computers and look for evidence after Al-Shabnan ordered the original report deleted from school computers.
Just three days before the raid, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to renew the academy’s lease of county property, ignoring multiple reports of the school’s promotion of violence and hatred.
This is far from the first time that the Islamic Saudi Academy has received unwelcome public scrutiny. Just a few days ago, the academy’s 1999 class valedictorian, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, had his 2005 conviction upheld by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals on charges that he joined Al-Qaeda and had plotted to assassinate President George W. Bush. Abu Ali was sentenced to 30 years in prison. As noted by Evan Kohlmann at Counterterrorism Blog, Abu Ali had joined an Al-Qaeda cell in Saudi Arabia while studying at the University of Medina, and one of his Al-Qaeda co-conspirators was killed in a shoot-out with Saudi authorities.
Last October the USCIRF sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asking her to close the school if academy officials continued to refuse to turn over copies of their textbooks to ensure that passages advocating violence against Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims were scrubbed. At the time, USCIRF Commissioner Nina Shea observed that since 9/11 the school had alternately denied that such passages existed, claimed it had already removed such (non-existent) passages, and stated that it was working on removing such (non-existent) passages.
And in April 2005, just a few weeks after Abu Ali’s terrorism conviction on all charges, Islamic Saudi Academy bus driver Abdelrazeg Abdalla lost control of his bus with 34 students on board. It careened down a hill and slammed into two cars. According to the Washington Post, police discovered that Abdalla’s license had been suspended for not maintaining proper insurance coverage and that the bus had bald tires and very little brakes. In addition to that, Abdalla had seven previous moving violations and a conviction for kidnapping his estranged wife and three-month-old daughter at knifepoint. He had also been picked up on undisclosed charges by the Department of Homeland Security and held for six months. The academy claimed in response that the bus had been approved after an inspection and that the driver had passed all required background checks. That notwithstanding, Abdalla was fired after the Washington Post began looking into the matter.
The Bush administration considers the Saudi government to be one of our allies in the War on Terror, and that support extends to the Islamic Saudi Academy as well. Cinnamon Stillwell recently noted an article in the Mount Vernon Gazette that reported 22 soldiers from Ft. Belvoir had recently graduated from the Islamic Saudi Academy’s “Arabic as a Second Language” program. This means that the school is not only being funded by the Saudi government, but also our own government. Deputy Assistant Secretary of The Army Dr. Lynn Heirakuji and the U.S. Army’s Deputy Assistant for Foreign Languages Erol Smith attended the graduation ceremonies.
No doubt we’re all grateful that our government is so adept at identifying who our enemies really are.
Patrick Poole is a regular contributor to Pajamas Media, and an anti-terrorism consultant to law enforcement and the military.
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10 Comments
Sandra M:
The Saudis own us. Like the Japanese, South Koreans and Chinese they own our debt. (Bush’s worst legacy: in 7 years, never vetoing pork-laden bills, driving us into debt during a time of war, and devaluing the dollar which did not help our trade deficit but has made American land and business cheap to buy. (The Saudis own part of News Corp; i.e the Fox News Channel. The Japanese bought Rockefeller Center and the Empire State Building (later sold it back I think). Now, the Arabs are buying The Chrysler building.
The Japanese once spent 400 million dollars on our Congress. The Arabs are probably spending even more on Obama who would become our first Arab-American President. (Barack Sr. was 87.5% Arab. It said so on his birth certificate).
I reviewed my underlinings in Michael Crichton’s RISING SUN and the parallels with the Arabs are scary. From the paper edition: pages 215-216 and p. 270.
ALL Wahhabis Imams should be deported immediately as they preach treason to this country. All Islamic schools and mosques should be investigated by Christian Arabs (usually Lebanese) since Islam’s rule that it’s OK to lie in behalf of Islam makes Muslims unreliable). If their textbooks should turn out to preach treason, the schools should be closed down.
Newt Gingrich’s suggestion (on Hannity & C, Fox News last night )that we dump half the petroleum reserve onto the market would hurt speculators badly (I can’t believe how low a margin you need to pay (5% ? It should be 50%) to speculate on oil futures. If Bush announced this move, lots of pension funds would flee the oil commodities market which has been making them look good to their investors while hurting the nation. The price of oil would plummet and speculators would be hurt. They’ve earned it!!!
Sign Newt’s DRILL HERE, DRILL NOW, PAY LESS petition and call your Senators and congresswoman. Their local phone numbers are in the front of the phone book in the government pages, or call The Capitol switchboard. 202-225-3121 This morning I was outraged to hear that we are SUBSIDIZING biofuels sent to Europe, it’s an IRS loophole. Enough! We should end the soybean and corn-based ethanol subsidy immediately. It’s driving our food prices up and is causing hunger in Africa, Central America and Asia. . We should import sugar-based ethanol from Brazil AND open Anwar and drill 65 miles offshore. (None of the oil rigs in the Gulf spilled a single drop of oil during Hurricane Katrina). I’m for protecting our beaches but our energy is in the hands of WATERMELONS, a term the Russians coined for those green on the outside and red on the inside.
We need independence from OPEC oil, and after the billions we’ve spent in Iraq, we should requst “preferred customer” treatment. We should remove our soldiers from Saudi Arabia if they don’t lower the price of oil. It’s time for hardball. The Bush family is so Saudi friendly that some of this would have to await McCain’s election. But it’s time to scare the Saudis who have abused our friendship. If we don’t remove our soldiers from Saudi Arabia, they should immediately be allowed to bring Christian bibles with them.
Remember that EVERY SINGLE CONGRESSMAN and l/3 of our Senators are up for re-election in November, and 4 1/2 months before an election it doesn’t matter how much money or how many perks foreigners have given them, angry voters matter more.