Police reinforcements circled on bicycles outside the Fairfax County, Va., government building as voices and anger mounted inside on a July evening. A land use hearing turned into a four-hour escalation of frustrations over the expansion of a local Islamic school, located in the outskirts of Washington. Senior citizens complained about traffic, but others complained about a school they believe to be training students in extremist Islam, drawing clucks of disapproval from Muslim women in the room in headscarves.
The Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) is a private school run by the Saudi government and criticized for teaching Wahhabism, a violent sect of Islam that follows Shariah law. Saudi government-issued textbooks at one point taught that killing adulterers and apostates was acceptable, prompting the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) to condemn the curriculum as failing to meet “international human rights norms.” Since then, the curriculum has been revised, eliminating most of the offensive passages according to a commissioner from USCIRF who has reviewed it.
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