Fairfax County is seeking an Arabic translator to review the religious texts of a Saudi school that a federal commission recently recommended be shut down unless the school proves it is not espousing violence or intolerance.
It's not clear whether a county-level review will satisfy the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which released a report this month recommending the closure of the Islamic Saudi Academy unless it made its curriculum open for public examination and cut its funding ties with the Saudi government. The school has campuses in Fairfax and Alexandria.
"We're most interested in an independent and comprehensive review of the text by someone who is not only competent in Arabic but competent in Islam," commission spokeswoman Judith Ingram said. "We're looking for a study of the entire curriculum, not a few textbooks here or there.
"Our concern would be that the people who carry out the study are indeed well-qualified to do it," she said.
The school has turned over its texts at the request of Fairfax County Supervisor Gerald Hyland, who represents the Mount Vernon District.
"The material that they're using, I trust upon review, will not be material that would constitute anything that people would find offensive or objectionable," he said.
The commission based its conclusions largely on a review of curricula in other Saudi schools that found a method that "encourages violence toward others, and misguides the pupils into believing that in order to safeguard their own religion, they must violently repress and even physically eliminate the other."
Neither the school's director general nor the Saudi Embassy returned calls for comment. The Islamic Saudi Academy serves about 1,000 students between its two campuses, which sit on Richmond Highway near Alexandria and on Popes Head Road near Fairfax City.