Christine Brim of the Center for Security Policy found a fascinating article from the Washington Post, circa, 2002, concerning the “withdrawal” of the embattled Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) from the prestigious Virginia Association of Independent Schools. According to the Washington Post, article:

Sources familiar with the decision said the Virginia accrediting agency became concerned that the school was not adhering to its standards on funding and governance and asked questions earlier this year. The association’s standards require that the governing board be independent, that the administration be stable and that funding not come primarily from a single source.

The Washington Post article further noted:

Sources said that the association’s board probably would have stripped accreditation from the school if it had not withdrawn, but that it had not met to discuss such a move.

The sources also said that some board members were concerned about aspects of the school’s curriculum. The Washington Post in January reported that some Islamic studies classes at the school use Saudi Arabian textbooks that promote hatred of other religions. However, the curricular concerns were not part of the questioning that led to the withdrawal, sources said.

It seems that the concerns about ISA hate texts and espousal of Wahhabi doctrine were in evidence back in 2002.

We have confirmed that the ISA is not on the roster of VAIS. See here.

If you go to the ISA website it states:

ISA is fully accredited with SACS (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools) and CITA (Commission for International and Trans Regional Accreditation). The ISA achieved SACS Standards and received re-accreditation. The Academy will also adhere to the Action Plan set forth to implement the recommendations by the SACS quality assurance team.

Note that the head of SACS accreditation back in 2002 said:

…he would be concerned if the [ISA]was teaching hatred.

With the release of the USCIRF report on the hate texts used in the current school academic year, shouldn’t SACS be concerned about this evidence of ISA teaching hatred?

To answer this question, I put a call into the Decatur, Georgia office of SACS and found that Mr. Bush had gone into ‘semi-retirement’ and was referred to the Virginia office. I posed concerns about what SACS would do in the wake of the release last week of the USCIRF report on the hate texts. The person who answered said that a ‘responsible officer’ would get back to me.

Equally troubling were the answers quoted in the Washington Post article by the spokesperson for the Saudi US Embassy , Nail Al-Jubeir, brother of the current Saudi Ambassador. Al-Jubeir, the Embassy spokesperson in 2002, said:

We don’t do the day to day running of the school.

The embassy views the school as independent because it runs its own affairs, though “it is part of the royal court”.

In a recent post on the ISA kerfuffle, we noted:

The ISA is closely related to the Saudi government. The chairman of the northern Virginia Saudi-sponsored school is the Royal Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. The lease with Fairfax County, just renewed for a term of two years, was executed and paid for by the Royal Saudi government. The annual lease payment is $2.2 million The federal Employer Identification Number used on the leasehold documents is that of the Saudi Embassy in Washington, DC.

Another revelation of seeming importance is the ISA tax status. The IRS as of this spring had no record of ISA paying taxes or of any filing of the required application to exempt it from paying taxes. Its FEIN (Federal Employer Identification Number) is registered to the “Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia”, according to the USCIRF.

The plot thickens as to what has been uncovered about ISA, the investigations will doubtless reveal more.