Multiculturalism:California's educrats have put out new rules for teaching Islamic studies to seventh-graders in public schools, and they are as biased as ever. They'll also likely spread eastward. The lesson guidelines adopted by the bellwether state whitewash the violence and oppression of women codified in Islamic law, or Shariah. And they're loaded with revisionist history about the faith. For example, the suggested framework glorifies Shariah as a liberal reform movement that "rejected" the mistreatment of women that existed in Arabia before Muhammad and his successors conquered the region, according to Accuracy in Academia.
The guidelines claim that Islamic law established for the first time that men and women were entitled to equal "respect." Not so, says Islamic scholar and author Nonie Darwish, who grew up Muslim in Egypt. "I am shocked that that is what they teach," she said. "Women had more rights in Arabia before Shariah." In fact, "wife beating is allowed under Shariah" today, she added. "It allows a woman seen without a headdress to be flogged, punishes rape victims, and calls for beheading for adultery." California's course on world religions also omits Islam's long history of jihadist violence, while portraying Christianity as an intolerant and bloodthirsty faith. Christianity isn't given equal time, either. It's covered in just two days — as opposed to up to two weeks for Islam — and doesn't involve kids in any role-playing activities like the Islam unit. Students do get a healthy dose of skepticism about the Christian faith, including a biting history of its persecution of other people. Islam, in contrast, gets a pass from critical review. Even jihad is presented as an "internal personal struggle to do one's best to resist temptation," not waging holy war. "California schools are pushing an unbalanced religious agenda that favors Islam and minimizes Christianity and Judaism," Accuracy in Academia warns in its latest Campus Report. Who helped build the California Education Department's framework for Islamic studies? Islamist "scholars" with the Council on Islamic Education, or CIE, a Saudi-tied activist group. The consultancy changed its name after former IBD Washington bureau chief Paul Sperry, author of "Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington," exposed that its chief researcher and textbook consultant for years taught social studies at a Saudi madrassa just outside Washington. The Islamic Saudi Academy is a breeding ground for terrorists, including the valedictorian-turned-al-Qaida agent recently sentenced to life for plotting to assassinate President Bush. Read more at IBD H/T: JihadWatch 
 A school for Muslim youth, founded by a decree of Saudi King Fahd in Virginia in 1984, may still be endorsing militant Jihad in its instruction techniques.A recent National Review article carried an analysis of the textbooks used for the 2008-2009 school year by the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA), the Virginia school founded by a decree of Saudi King Fahd in 1984. The authors state they were not persuaded that problems with the curriculum had been solved. Their specific criticisms included: Jihad is a central tenet of Islam and is raised multiple times in the Koran. Saudi textbooks describe jihad as “the summit of Islam” and “one of the most magnificent acts of obedience to God,” and endorse its militant form for both defensive and aggressive purposes. ISA’s new texts, however, make no mention of militant jihad, not even as a defensive measure. And they make only a single passing reference to the alternative view of jihad. (Buried toward the end of a twelfth-grade text is a two-line reference to the “greater jihad” — the obligation “to do jihad against Satan, selfish desire and capriciousness.”) At a time when many Muslim radicals proclaim the merits of militant jihad, ignoring the issue almost completely will not suffice to orient students toward the peaceful interpretation. One must wonder whether the books were even intended to do such a thing. Read more ... Source: The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report
 By Nina Shea and Ali al-Ahmed For nearly 25 years, the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA), the Virginia school founded by royal decree of Saudi King Fahd in 1984, immersed students of its Islamic-studies curriculum in the same Wahhabi interpretation of Islam that is taught in Saudi Arabia and in Saudi-funded madrassas around the world. That curriculum includes praise for militant jihad to “spread the faith” and permission for the killing of various categories of “unbelievers,” as well as other endorsements of religious intolerance. Now, as it seeks permission from Fairfax County to expand its operations, ISA claims that, over the last school year, it replaced the Saudi religious curriculum with a more moderate one. Through private channels, we were able to acquire ISA’s Islamic-studies textbooks, all marked for use in the first semester of the 2008-09 school year. Compared to the original Saudi Education Ministry versions, these new Arabic-language textbooks — one slim, single volume for each grade — are indeed redacted and condensed. We wish we could celebrate the deletions we helped catalyze, but we are not persuaded that the problem is solved. The books contain no significant discussion of jihad and make few references to the religious “other.” The silence is deafening. It raises the question — a question ISA has yet to answer — of what supplemental material the academy is using. Jihad is a central tenet of Islam and is raised multiple times in the Koran. Saudi textbooks describe jihad as “the summit of Islam” and “one of the most magnificent acts of obedience to God,” and endorse its militant form for both defensive and aggressive purposes. Read more ...Source: NROH/T: IPT Blog
 By Faith J. H. McDonnell Last year, the sad story of a little dog that was stalked for days and then swallowed whole by an enormous python made news around the world. The Peric family of Queensland State, Australia, had already lost a cat and a guinea pig to the sixteen foot-long snake a few weeks earlier. After such satisfying meals at Chez Peric, the python went after Scotty, the family’s Chihuahua. Stuart Douglas of the Australian Venom Zoo told the press that the Perics had actually seen the snake in the dog’s bed several times in the days leading up to the devouring. This was a sure signal that the python had designs on Scotty. This month, a python was responsible for a far more tragic event. During the night of July 1, 2009, Charles Jason Darnell’s “pet” Burmese python escaped from its aquarium in Oxford, Florida, got into the nursery, and strangled the two-year-old daughter of Darnell’s girlfriend. According to Fox News, Darnell told investigators that he put the 8 feet 5 inch snake in a bag in its aquarium Tuesday night. When he woke up Wednesday morning, he found the python wrapped around Shaiunna Hare in her crib. Other news sources said that the girl’s mother revealed that the snake had escaped already once from the aquarium earlier that night. In both incidents there were signs of a problem in the making. The Perics had lost two other pets to the scrub python in Australia. They had seen the python nestling in the dog’s bed! What did they think? That this was a kumbayah moment between snake and dog? And Charles Darnell’s pet python had already escaped from the aquarium once that night. Why on earth would the Oxford, Florida man not assume that the snake would escape again and take the necessary precautions? When it comes to something as dangerous as a python, warning signs should not be ignored because when you lie down with pythons, you seldom rise at all. Read more ...Source: FPM
 A school that is explicitly proselytizing Islam according to the Wahhabi House of Saud seeks expansion in Fairfax County, Virginia. The hearing is tonight.Frank Gaffney, Jr. At this writing, the Board of Supervisors of Fairfax County, Virginia are poised to make a momentous decision. After a hearing tonight, the Supervisors could well accede to demands by the House of Saud to change the name of their jurisdiction to Faisal County, in recognition of the contributions the late Saudi king and the virulent strain of Islam promoted by his government in Northern Virginia and elsewhere. Just kidding. No, for the moment at least, the Saudis are only seeking that the supervisors approve the use of a fraction of the county as a Wahhabi beachhead in America. They want a prime piece of undeveloped real estate to effect a sizeable expansion of the kingdom's school here known as the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) so as to enable it to enroll 1,200 students. Never mind that this school has become notorious in recent years for the association of a number of its faculty and students with terrorism. As David Stokes has documented in an excellent article posted over the weekend at Townhall.com, the perpetrators have run the gamut from those implicated in plots to assassinate a sitting president of the United States, to casing the structural supports for a major bridge to trying to smuggle a butcher's knife aboard an airplane. Read more ... Source: FSMIslamic Saudi Academy Latest recipient of the Distinguished Islamofascist Award
 Imagine facing the overwhelming odds of fighting for equality in Islamic supremacist Saudi Arabia or in the 1960s-era white supremacist Mississippi. These were the same odds faced by a handful of activists in challenging the estimated 600 supporters of the Islamic Saudi Academy at Northern Virginia's Fairfax County Planning Commission on the night of March 18, 2009. Many hundreds of the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) supporters wore printed name tag badges reading "I Support ISA," including ISA's logo containing the emblem of Saudi Arabian government with its two crossed swords. This is the same Saudi government that a few weeks ago the U.S. State Department condemned for its "significant human rights problems" in denying basic freedoms and human rights to men, women, and non-Muslims, and the same Saudi government whose courts recently sentenced a 75 year old woman to 40 lashes for "mingling" with men, and whose courts recently sentenced a pregnant gang-rape victim to 100 lashes for "adultery." Read more ...Source: United States ActionH/T: Jihad Watch
 WASHINGTON (JTA) -- A congressman urged the State Department to investigate the content of textbooks at a Virginia Islamic Academy.
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) wrote the department for the seventh time, but for the first time since Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, to ask that the department convene an independent panel to "definitively translate and interpret the textbooks and determine exactly what is being taught" at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Northern Virginia.
Wolf said in the letter that he was spurred by an Associated Press story on Thursday that stated that while the schools' textbooks had been revised last year, they still contained enough "sensitive material to fuel critics who claime the books show intolerance toward those who do not follow strict interpretation toward Islam."
The school, which educates 900 students, overhauled their textbooks after the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom issued a report stating that there were a number of problematic passages, including one saying "the Jews conspired against Islam and its people."
The new books remove those passages, but according to the AP still disparage Jewish and Christian scholars for rejecting "the true path of Islam" and warn Muslims to be careful in accepting party and wedding invitations from non-Muslims.
"The State Department has a role to play in this controversy and needs to help resolve the issue," Wolf said. "If there is still a problem, let’s address it. If not, let’s report that, too. The bottom line is there needs to be resolution to this issue. It’s time to settle this.” Source: JTAH/T: Weasel ZippersHon. Frank R. Wolf Latest recipient of The MASH Award
 U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) is nothing if not tenacious. He sent five letters to the State Department and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice during the last 15 months of the Bush Administration expressing his concern about intolerance and extremism in Saudi Arabian textbooks, especially those being used at the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) in Alexandria, Va. An analysis by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) concluded that, despite promise to remove references to offending passages, the books still teach that "Jews conspired against Islam," that Sunni Muslims should shun all Shia Muslims and that killing an apostate or an adulterer is acceptable under Islamic law. Now there's a new team at the State Department and Wolf has written to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging her to act. He told Clinton his past overtures resulted only in "vague assurances on the part of the State Department and the school that the curriculum has been reformed. But these assurances are insufficient, particularly when they are utterly at odds with USCIRF's findings, and may be indicative of a wider problem-namely the status of Saudi commitments made in 2006 to conduct ‘a comprehensive revision of textbooks and educational curricula to weed out disparaging remarks.'" A resolution is needed, even if it turns out the matter has been resolved quietly, Wolf wrote: "If the students at ISA are not being taught or exposed to texts that incite hatred and intolerance of other people and faiths, then in all fairness to them and those associated with the academy, concerns should be put to rest. If, however, the content of the textbooks is consistent with USCIRF's findings, then action is required." Saudi Arabia was among the largest donors to former President Bill Clinton's charity foundation, Wolf notes. If Secretary of State Clinton wants to show those donations will not affect her decisions as the nation's top diplomat, Wolf writes, demanding answers from the ISA would be a good start. Source: IPT BlogHon. Frank Wolf Latest recipient of The MASH Award
 By Paul Sperry When the Saudi Embassy earlier this year asked officials to renew the lease of a radical school it runs in Alexandria, Va., local residents strenuously objected. They argued the school teaches hatred toward Jews and Christians, and has become a breeding ground for terrorists. Gerry Connolly, at the time the Democrat chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, gave a full-throated defense of the Islamic Saudi Academy, even smearing protesters as anti-Islamic "bigots." All the while, Connolly was running for U.S. Congress and according to the latest FEC records, accepting thousands of dollars in donations from Saudi bagmen -- including some whose homes and offices were raided after 9/11 on suspicion of terror financing (and whose donations to other Democrats have been quietly returned in shame). Their investment appears to have paid off. The Saudi madrassa got its lease and is still in operation; and Connolly is in a more powerful position on the Hill. Last month, he easily beat GOP challenger Keith Fimian to take retiring Republican Rep. Tom Davis' old seat representing Virginia's 11th Congressional District. Read more ...Source: FrontPage MagazineGerald Connolly Latest recipient of The Dhimmi Award
 U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) apparently isn't one to take no for an answer. Or, one to take no answer for an answer for that matter. On Tuesday, Wolf wrote his third letter to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice demanding she take aggressive action to determine whether textbooks at a Saudi-run school in Virginia teach extremism and intolerance, including a book which states the killing an apostate or an adulterer is acceptable under Islamic law. Wolf first wrote to Rice June 24, citing a new report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and asking that the State Department translate a collection of textbooks from the Islamic Saudi Academy that it has to assess their content. "The State Department is not doing its duty," he handwrote next to his signature. Receiving no response, he wrote again on July 14 noting the new school year was approaching and answers were needed before that. Wolf and the USCIRF argue that the State Department has authority to investigate the ISA, because the school is funded by the Saudi Arabian embassy. The Saudi ambassador to Washington leads the school's board of directors. Read more ...Source: IPT BlogHon. Frank R. Wolf Latest recipient of The MASH Award
 By Nina Shea The Saudi Arabian Ministry of Education publishes and disseminates teachings that Muslims are to hate and treat as "enemies" other religious believers, including other, non-Wahhabi Muslims. Those were our findings in a 2006 study of Saudi government textbooks. And despite the media outcry that followed, our most recent investigation shows that Saudi textbooks, now available on the Saudi Ministry of Education website, have not been cleaned up. The same violent and intolerant lessons remain. These textbooks assert that it is permissible for a Muslim to kill an "apostate," an "adulterer," those practicing "major polytheism," and homosexuals. They promote global jihad as an "effort to wage war against the unbelievers," including for the purpose of "calling [infidels] to the faith." They continue to teach that "the hour [of judgment] will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them," that Shiite practices amount to "polytheism" (see above), that the Christian Crusades never ended, and that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are historical fact. In these lessons, the Saudi government discounts or ignores passages in the Qur'an and in the accounts of the life of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad that support tolerance. Read more ...Source: NewsweekH/T: Shariah Finance Watch
 By Jerry Gordon and Isabelle Cruz Last month we chronicled in a New English Review article the nearly 25 year saga of citizen opposition to the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA), a Royal Saudi Embassy sponsored private school with two campuses located in Fairfax County, Virginia. The ISA is one of 20 such Saudi funded schools around the world with ties to the Kingdom’s Ministry of Education that espouses the strict Islamic doctrine of Wahhabism. When the US Commission on International Religious Freedom released a report on its review of 17 textbooks used in the Islamic Studies program at the embattled ISA on June 11th, a fuse was lit that resulted in a protest outside the main Alexandria, Virginia Campus on June 17th. The group of 15 protesters who rallied outside the ISA 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). Read more ...Source: New English Review
 By Monty Tayloe The U.S. State Department has left it up to Fairfax County whether to continue leasing county buildings to the Islamic Saudi Academy, a local Islamic school that has operated in Alexandria and Fairfax for more than 20 years. Textbooks used by ISA were recently found by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom to promote religious intolerance and violence. "The [State Department] has not objected to the [Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia] leasing the property in question for the Academy," reads the letter to Fairfax Board chairman Gerry Connolly on behalf of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. Although the county board voted in May to renew the school's lease, they reconsidered after the allegations by the USCIRF were released. Since the school is leased through the Saudi Arabian government, Fairfax asked the State Department to weigh in, a request that agency has now denied. "No authorization from the Department to renew the lease is required," the federal response reads, putting the ball firmly in Fairfax County's court. As of press time, county supervisors had not indicated what their next step might be. Read more ...Source: Fairfax Times
 By Jerry Markon and Ben Hubbard A Saudi-funded academy in Fairfax County used textbooks as recently as 2006 that compared Jews and Christians to apes and pigs, told eighth-graders that these groups are "the enemies of the believers" and diagrammed for high school students where to cut off the hands and feet of thieves, a Washington Post review of the books has found. Saudi officials acknowledged that the textbooks used at the Islamic Saudi Academy had contained inflammatory material since at least the mid-1990s but said they ordered revisions in 2006. School administrators said that they have been scrambling to change the texts and that all potentially offensive passages will be gone by the coming academic year. But, they said, teachers have always been told to avoid inflammatory material in the classroom. A sampling of 2006-07 Islamic studies textbooks showed that much of the controversial material had been removed. At least one book still contained passages that extolled jihad and martyrdom, called for victory over one's enemies and said the killing of adulterers and apostates was "justified." Read more ...Source: The Washington Post
 By Jerry Gordon This article focuses on the controversy generated by a report of the Congressionally chartered group, The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). The report spearheaded by Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute. The USCIRF reviewed the Saudi-sponsored Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) of Fairfax, Virginia, in particular the hate texts from its Wahhabi Islamic Studies program. It tells the story of a coalition of regional and national grass roots activist groups and a courageous U.S. Congressman, author of the landmark 1998 federal legislation (PL 105-202) that created the USCIRF, Rep. Frank Wolf of Northern Virginia. Who, faced with the feckless political actions of Fairfax County government officials, has vaulted the problems of the ISA from a local to a national and international arena. In the words of one of the leaders of the grass roots protests against the ISA, its Saudi Embassy sponsorship and its Wahhabi hate texts, Jim Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition (TVC), and a former Capitol Hill aide, it has become a “hot potato.” Christine Brim of the Center for Security Policy (CSP), noted in an email comment to the author the common thread from the 1990’s to today regarding citizen actions against the Saudi-sponsored ISA and the positions of local leaders. Read more ...Source: New English ReviewNina Shea Latest recipient of The MASH Award
 Connolly Contributor Uses Aliases and Has Links to HamasJune 30, 2008 – Washington, DC – The Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) has called on Fairfax County Supervisor Gerald Connolly to return a contribution his Congressional campaign received from a radical Islamic official and reopen the supervisors’ lease renewal of the Islamic Saudi Academy. A Federal Election Commission report lists “Nehad Hammad” as the Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and reports that he donated $500 to the Congressional primary campaign of Gerald Connolly, chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. Law enforcement officials note that Hammad is an alias used by Nihad Awad who is the founder of CAIR and is listed on the group’s website as its Executive Director. Before founding CAIR, Awad served as spokesman for the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) which the Federal Bureau of Investigation officials have identified as a front-group for the violent terrorist organization Hamas. According to several sources, Awad uses the name Nehad Hammad on some official forms such as IRS documents instead of the name Nihad Awad he uses publicly as a top official at CAIR. One former federal official refers to CAIR as “Terrorists R Us” and points to a long list of CAIR staff who have been convicted of financing terrorist activities. Read more ... Source: TVCGerald Connolly Latest recipient of The Dhimmi Award
The controversial school funded by the Saudi Embassy had its corporate charter revoked in 2004 and has never filed required tax forms with the IRS. By Patrick Poole An investigation by Pajamas Media has found that more trouble may be on the horizon for the Islamic Saudi Academy and the Saudi Embassy. PJM first reported on the academy –a school sponsored by the Saudi Embassy– two weeks ago, when law enforcement authorities raided it looking for evidence that the school’s director, Abdullah Al-Shabnan, had covered up sex abuse allegations by a 5-year old student. The raid occurred just three days after the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors had renewed the school’s lease despite evidence that the school continued to use textbooks promoting violence and religious hatred. Since then Abdullah Al-Shabnan has been charged with failing to report the child abuse allegations and obstruction of justice. A protest was held last week in front of the academy and it received considerable local media coverage, including from the Washington Post. That coverage no doubt played a role earlier this week when in a stunning about-face the Fairfax Board of Supervisors sent a letter to the State Department asking them to determine whether the lease should be renewed or not in light of the report earlier this month by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) that reviewed the academy’s textbooks and found that incendiary and hateful passages had not been removed. Read more ...Source: Pajamas Media
 High school students in the Wahhabi-led school learn that "the Jews conspired against Islam" and Sunni Muslims should shun all Shia Muslims. They also are taught that killing an apostate or an adulterer is acceptable under Islamic law. And polytheists (defined elsewhere as Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and even Shia and Sufi Muslims) likewise can be subject to death for their transgressions. It is troubling enough to consider such lessons being ingrained in the minds of teenagers in Riyadh and throughout the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. But the same textbooks are in use in Alexandria, Va., at the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA), a report issued earlier in June by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) found. The school issued a statement disputing the findings as "erroneous," and claiming the commission used "mistranslated and misinterpreted texts, and references to textbooks that are no longer in use at the Academy." But this week, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, which leases property to the Saudi Academy, appealed to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice for guidance. According to a local news report, Fairfax County Chairman Gerry Connolly, who signed the letter, "offered a strong defense of the Islamic Saudi Academy and accused the school's critics of slander during a meeting last month in which the school's lease was" renewed. Read more ...Source: IPT News
By Pamela Geller Good news. Press release concerning the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors dramatic reversal of support for the Islamic Saudi Academy attached for your blog. Heres an excerpt of the Press release from John Cosgrove, Virginia Chapter Director United American Committee. Read more ...Source: Atlas
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