A federal commission recommended on Thursday shutting down a private Saudi school in Fairfax County if the school can’t prove it’s not teaching religious intolerance and violence.
The State Department should seek to close the Islamic Saudi Academy until it makes its textbooks open for public examination and cuts its funding ties with the Saudi government, according to the report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The school, referred to in the report as the ISA, has its main campus on Richmond Highway near Alexandria and another on Pope’s Head Road near Fairfax City. Together, the campuses serve almost 1,000 students.
“Significant concerns remain about whether what is being taught the ISA promotes religious intolerance and may adversely affect the interests of the United States,” the report said.
It cited a study of religious curricula in other Saudi Arabian schools that found an approach that “encourages violence toward others, and misguides the pupils into believing that in order to safeguard their own religion, the must violently repress and even physically eliminate the other.”
Neither the director general of the school nor the Saudi embassy could be reached for comment on Thursday.
