Obey Your Saudi Overlords!

This just in...State Department and Mason District Supervisor Penny Gross announce plan to confront an academy teaching murder. It is bold in its simplicity, as it has only three steps:

1. Locate sand
2. Insert head
3. Rinse and repeat until desired level of denial is achieved

This plan of action, just narrowly beat out a competing, yet equally compelling strategy, one, that as runner-up, will be the contingency plan.

1. Hear no Evil
2. See no Evil
3. Do no Evil

William Flock of the Examiner, June 13, 2008, reports the following actions:

"The US State Department expects the Saudi government to purge intolerant passages from its educational curricula by the beginning of next school year" And this time the State Department really really really means it, or else...the Saudi's will be placed in time out to think about what they've done.

Meanwhile back in the vast and desolate wasteland that is Supervisor Gross's plane of thought,
Mason District Supervisor Penny Gross chooses to ignore being lied to.

“We are not in a position to determine what is going to go on in a classroom there,” said Mason District Supervisor Penny Gross. The fundamental problem (one among many) here, is that what is going to go on in a classroom has already been determined...Jihad!

Supervisor Gross continued Operation Pass the Buck by concluding: “What we were asked to do was consider leasing the land and school to the Islamic Saudi Academy, and that’s what we did.”

Based on this flaccid policy, expect to see her champion my leasing of the old Fairfax City library for environmental welfare classes on behalf of the Earth Liberation Front. Charles Manson acolytes have also taken this as a signal of approval to begin hosting sacrifices at the Burke Lake Amphitheater.

So as not to think I am singling out Supervisor Gross without merit, I encourage you, dear reader, to watch her testimony during the May 19 hearing. She was presented with the following facts during the hearing:

1. The Academy had a Senior Superlative of Most Likely to Be a Martyr
2. The 1999 winner of that Superlative, and valedictorian, is in jail for terrorism and assassination attempts
3. Saudi Arabia still kills infidels, sentences rape victims, is considered by the US Treasury Dept to be a leading financier of terrorism, and has had two of its charities closed for terrorism related offenses

Her response to these evils was to joke in Latin and place parochial schools on the same level as maddrassas. I could not make this up. Her vapid ruminations can be found at the 49:25 minute mark here:

http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/cable/channel16/vod.htm

Select "Public Hearings" from the May 19 links.

State Department: Saudis to scrub curriculum by school year start

William C. Flook, The Examiner
2008-06-13 07:00:00.0
Current rank: # 61 of 8,936

WASHINGTON -

The U.S. State Department expects the Saudi government to purge intolerant passages from its educational curricula by the beginning of next school year, a spokesman said Thursday, a day after a federal commission drew attention to texts condoning violence and martyrdom at a Fairfax County Saudi prep school.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom on Wednesday issued a highly critical review of textbooks used by the Islamic Saudi Academy, which has two campuses in Fairfax, citing materials that demonized other religions and excused the killing of non-believers and adulterers. The school is tied to the Saudi government.

The report comes two weeks after the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors’ unanimous vote to extend the academy’s lease for a year, and eight months after the commission first recommended closing the school if it didn’t prove it wasn’t inciting religious hatred.

State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos, in response to a question on Wednesday’s report at a daily press briefing, said the Saudi government first acknowledged the need to revise the textbooks used at its schools in July 2006 “to remove all intolerant passages that disparage or promote hatred toward other religious groups or religions,” and agreed to cut them by the 2008 school year.

Dwight Bashir, senior policy analyst for the commission, said the State Department has been looking at the school’s texts for years and has yet to publicly issue its views.

He said the Saudi government uses the same curriculum at the 19 schools it runs abroad, including the Islamic Saudi Academy, as it uses for schools within the country.

While Bashir said the State Department has repeatedly cited progress on removing the offending passages, many remain “peppered” within the Islamic Saudi Academy’s texts the commission reviewed.

“The incitement to violence, that stuff is still there,” Bashir said. “And the real demonizing stuff about other groups is also still there. And this is just a little sample.”

Fairfax County supervisors said Wednesday’s report has not made them rethink their decision to renew the lease.

“We are not in a position to determine what is going to go on in a classroom there,” said Mason District Supervisor Penny Gross. “What we were asked to do was consider leasing the land and school to the Islamic Saudi Academy, and that’s what we did.”

No one who could speak for the academy could be reached Thursday.

wflook@dcexaminer.com

www.examiner.com/
a-1439312~State_Department__Saudis_to_scrub_curriculum_by_school_year_start.html