Protesters say Northern Va. school teaches violence

By News in Brief
Published: June 23, 2008

ALEXANDRIA—More than a dozen people protested outside a private Islamic school in Northern Virginia that they say teaches violence and intolerance.

The protest last Tuesday at the Islamic Saudi Academy near Alexandria comes a week after a federal commission found numerous troubling passages in the school’s textbooks. They include a passage that says that apostates – those who leave Islam – and adulterers may be permissibly killed.

The protesters want the State Department to make public copies of textbooks that it obtained from the Saudi Embassy. The State Department has so far refused to do so.

The academy says that the commission mistranslated and misinterpreted its textbooks.