It's most virulent critics have dubbed it "Terror High," and 12 U.S. senators and a federal commission want to shut it down.
The teachers, administrators and some 900 students at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Fairfax County have heard the allegations for years - after the Sept. 11 attacks and then a few years later when a class valedictorian admitted he had joined al-Qaida.
Now the school is on the defensive again, with a report issued last month by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom saying the academy should be closed, pending a review of its curriculum and textbooks.
Abdalla al-Shabnan, the school's director general, says criticism of the school is based not on evidence, but on preconceived notions of the Saudi educational system.
The school, serving grades K-12 on campuses in Fairfax and Alexandria, receives financial support from the Saudi government, and its textbooks are based on Saudi curriculum. Critics say the Saudis propagate a severe version of Islam in their schools.
But al-Shabnan said the school significantly modified those textbooks to remove passages deemed intolerant of other religions. Among the changes, officials removed from teachers' versions of first-grade textbooks an excerpt instructing teachers to explain "that all religions, other than Islam, are false, including that of the Jews, Christians and all others."
TBO
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