Questions about Saudi academy in Virginia

[followerofchrist]

Critics of a private Saudi academy renting a local government building in northern Virginia warn the school promotes a virulent form of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism.​

Fairfax County, Virginia, supervisors voted last week to continue leasing property to the Islamic Saudi Academy, despite concerns over the K-12 school's past use of classroom material that promoted hatred against Jews and Christians. In October, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom issued a report harshly criticizing the Saudi educational system, and called on the State Department to shut down the Islamic Saudi Academy. Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, says Saudi schools teach students that in order to safeguard Islam, they must "violently repress and even physically eliminate" non-Muslims. "Remember that 15 out of the 19 [September 11, 2001, hijackers] were Saudi Arabian nationals," she points out. "What did these men learn as students? They learned ... from their textbooks, remember -- that there is no peaceful coexistence with so-called 'infidels.'" Lafferty says students are taught that not only is peace unobtainable, but that violent jihad is an obligation. "And we are very troubled ... that they refer to Christians and Jews as 'apes' and 'swine,'" she notes. Currently, Lafferty is pressing the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to release the findings of a translation it commissioned of the Arabic textbooks used at the Academy. She remains skeptical of the school's claims that its curriculum is tolerant of all faiths and that offensive portions of their textbooks have been modified. http://www.onenewsnow.com/Security/Default.aspx?id=123454

 

[followerofchrist]

PLEASE PRAY FOR OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS BEING PERSECUTED IN IRAN!!!! A crackdown against Christians is under way in Iran. Police in the southern city of Shiraz have jailed members of three Christian families, confiscating their books and computers. After hours of interrogation, 8 of the 12 who had been arrested were released. Carl Moeller, president of Open Doors USA, says the idea of the campaign is to send a frightening message to other Christians who want to practice their faith. "Just this month, Iranian police have arrested 12 Christian converts in the southern city of Shiraz, and that has been a warning sign against the growth of the underground church there, the house church movement in Iran," Moeller explains. He adds that being jailed often means death. "In many cases, some just disappear. And of course we assume, and evidence in the past has indicated, that these people are either killed outright or die during torture. In this case, four still remain in custody and at least two of them are without communication. We really don't know where they're being held," Moeller says. One of the purposes of the torture, according to Moeller, is to force arrested Christians to reveal the names of others in the underground church. It is illegal, Moeller notes, for Muslims to convert to Christianity. "Mostly they've been questioned, interrogated specifically about their Christian activity and their house church activity. These are people who are being arrested and targeted specifically because they've converted from Islam to Christianity, and that's the crime of apostasy in Islam, which can be punished with execution," Moeller points out. Moeller believes the arrests are intended to frighten the underground church out of existence.