For years, children’s voices rang out from the playground at the Islamic Saudi Academy in this heavily wooded community about 20 miles west of Washington. But for the last year the campus has been silent as academy officials seek county permission to erect a new classroom building and move hundreds of students from a sister campus on the other end of Fairfax County.
The proposal from the academy, which a school spokeswoman said was the only school financed by the Saudi government in the United States, has ignited a noisy debate and exposed anew the school’s uneasy relationship with its neighbors.
I live 5 minutes away from this school and there have been long been concerns about extremism being taught there as noted in the article. The two quotes that jumped out at me:
“Besides, academy officials and parents contend, an entire school should not be condemned for the actions of one or two students. They point out that no one laid the blame for the massacre at Virginia Tech on the high school alma mater of the gunman, Seung-Hui Cho.”
“We have hundreds of students and hundreds of parents who send their students to this place to get ideal education,†said Mr. Alghofaili, the director general. “It doesn’t make sense that their parents would send their kids to a place to learn how to hate or to kill others.â€
Please.
I have a thought. Suppose – since the academy is financed by the Saudi government – permission be given for expansion, if similar permission is given for a Christian children’s school in Jeddah (with which the present institution could be twinned). I’m sure there are enough Christian expats who would welcome such a development.
[url=http://catholicandreformed.blogspot.com]Catholic and Reformed[/url]
I moved from Fairfax County, Virginia over four years ago after having lived in that county four 18 years.
During that 18 year period, the demographics of Fairfax County changed dramatically with an influx of newcomers from all of the world’s continents.
Most of the newcomers demonstrated a heartfelt desire to become part of the American mainstream and seemed to really enjoy their new country. These newcomers were and are the type of immigrants that have found America a land of opportunity, success, personal security, and political freedom.
However, many of the Muslims, certainly not all Muslims, but a non-assimilating and significant number of them seem to find themselves in a foreign and culturally distasteful country. Those Muslims who feel that way have tended to isolate themselves from the mainstream of life in Fairfax County and present a definite apppearance of being ‘colonizers’ rather than ‘immigrants.’
Part of this “colonizer’ mindset is seen in their deliberate efforts to set themselves apart from the rest of the population of Faifax County. Its not just the Islamic schools and there are more than reported in this article. Its not just the fact that, according to the Washington Post several years back, that hate toward infidels is taught to Muslim children in Muslim schools.
Its more than that. I have witnessed more than once Muslim intolerance toward non-Muslims. For example, Muslim men and women looking with disgust at non-Muslim women dressed in modest summer attire, e.g. knee length shorts and short sleeved blouses, while standing in line at a local super market. I could go on, but all of my anecdotes would be a repetitious expansion of the previous example.
By the way, the Muslim taxi drivers at Reagan National Airport have the times of their obligatory prayers set aside and have been given a place to communally hold those prayers. Are Christian, Jewish or Buddhist taxi drivers given the same consideration? Christian atheletic coaches aren’t even permitted to participate in group prayer sessions with their team members.
So the question begs. Are many Muslim immigrants truly immigrating to the USA or are they creating Muslim colonies in the USA?
By the way, I have traveled to many countries on five continents and I would never, never, never behave and have never behaved in a manner that displayed disrespect, disdain or ethnic/religious elitism toward gtoward the citizens of those countries.
AnglicanFirst,
Many of those you describe are first generation immigrants; the real question is what is happening to their children.
The points you raise were also made in the early twentieth century about the “unassimilable ethnics,” those hailing from Southern and Eastern Europe. Clearly, there is some evidence that there is a difference in the character of the second and third generations of Muslim Americans that is cause for concern (the persistence of the ethnic enclave, of you will), but that is where the judgment has to be made. Go back a hundred years, and you can find plenty of Progressive warnings of Italian and Polish “colonies” and their hostility to the American way of life.
Reply to Jeremy Bonner (#4.).
Jeremy,
I grew up in Schenectady County, NY. I am very aware of what it means to live in an etnically diverse population.
My high school sweetheart was Italian-American and my best friend from elementary school through high school and after high school was Polish-American. As a matter of fact I still retain a certain level of competence, diminished over the years, in Italian and in Polish. In addition, there were many other ethnic groups in Schenectady County.
Therefore, I consider myself to be a competent and objective observer of inter-ethnic interaction. I won’t going into further detail regarding my experiences overseas as a guest in the midst of other cultures.
However, the behavior of many Muslims that I observed in Fairfax County is not what I experienced in Schenectady County.
Among, a significant number of the Muslims, I found a separatist and colonizing behavior that I did not observe In Schenectady County.
AnglicanFirst,
I’m not questioning your competence to judge, merely pointing out a distinction. I would imagine that most of those with whom you grew up were at least second-generation if not third (i.e. not the first in their family to set foot on these shores). If so, then that changes the nature of the enclave, even while linguistic and cultural traits still persist. The only way to test your theory would be to go back to Schenectady County in 1909 and observe if there was less of a sense of polarization between the native-born and the immigrant than you detect in Fairfax County today (and I believe you that it does exist). For good measure I would add that I live in the Squirrel Hill district of Pittsburgh, one end of which is an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. While I certainly don’t sense hostility when I wander through that section or have a bite to eat in the Milky Way restaurant (which is well worth a visit) it still is an enclave that defines itself by being out of the world.
As an aside illustrating how continued ties to the motherland influence behavior, I recall talking to a professor in North Dakota who had done some research on the Volga Germans who lived in the southwestern portion of the state during the 1930s. He described letters that he had read sent by relatives in Russia describing conditions under collectivization. It is perhaps not surprising that the Volga German reaction to New Deal agricultural policy was chilly, at best. By contrast the Norwegian-Americans whom I was studying were receiving news of a Labour Party government in Norway, many of whose members hailed from agricultural backgrounds and helped formulate rural policy. Most Norwegian-Americans were far more sympathetic to AAA and other such innovations.
In the 90’s I worked at Washington Hospital Center.
We had a lot of patients from the Saudi embassy.
We also had to extend them every last courtesy, including all the women seeing women-only doctors; many times we could not conduct certain tests because they would not remove their burkas(sp?), a male EKG tech could not do an EKG on a Saudi woman, it had to be a female tech; etc. This could really disrupt the flow of care and sometimes burdened everyone in the workplace. But that did not matter…
So thus, we had to conform to their culture even though THEY were in OUR country.
But, if I were to saunter down the street in Mecca wearing no head covering, short shorts and a tank top, I’d probably get thrown in jail or beaten.
What is wrong with this picture?
AnglicanFirst: I don’t think it a sign of intolerance that someone from a traditional Arab or Muslim culture would find the amount of skin exposure that we are accustomed to to be “stare-worthy”. I think it’s just a cultural shock for them. I say this not to minimize your point that immigration works best when it does not resist assimilation. However, I think your example of “intolerance” is not intolerance at all. It is shock at a difference. I know I find myself staring sometimes at the “full-Saudi” approach in malls. It’s not that I would take away the right of those people to dress as they choose, it’s simply that the look is so different that I sometimes find myself startled by it.
The “look” that comes from the conservative Muslims is not culture shock, primarily. It is contempt. I have experienced this many times, the first time in the Istanbul airport in 2003. I was standing alone, a mid-fifties Western woman wearing very conservative long sleeves and long pants, and a woman in a hijab looked me over as if I were a hooker. This has happened numerous times, and trust me, at my age I don’t wear provocative clothing even in the USA.
We were recently given, by a pilgrimage returnee, the parallel English/Arabic Qur’an, with notes from the hadiths, which is distributed free to pilgrims in Mecca. Both by browsing through it myself and by checking out the translation which is used on the internet, I can see that this is a hard-line Wahhabi version of the faith, including the exhortations to stay away from unbelievers and to refrain from making friends of them, as well as all the violent bits. A Saudi-funded school in the US is not going to be a place where “moderate” Islam and cooperation with American society are taught. When they stay separate, they are not teaching how to live together. This is entirely different from a weekend class at a local mosque, which might be acceptable depending upon the mosque and its leadership.
The key it would seem to me is how they are educating their children. Do Virginia or New York have any say in the curriculum of the school? Shouldn’t they have to provide some proof that the children are learning to read and write English and learning about our American heritage and government? If they do not wish to be a part of life in America, why are they here? Why is it so important for the Saudis to be investing big bucks into keeping them here and building schools to promote their Islamic culture? Colonization comes to mind very quickly.
I am a second generation American on my father’s side of the family. His parents came to America in the late 1800s to seek religious freedom. They got busy right away becoming American citizens, and ensuring that their children were educated in the local schools. While they themselves did not become completely proficient in English, and retained their European culture, their children and grandchildren became contributing members of this nation. That’s why this kind of school is such a mystery to some of us. Especially since 9/11.
A cherished family document in my possession) is a family history written (in German) by hand by my grandfather telling his family how he and my grandmother moved their family several times until they finally came to California to farm. They were grateful American citizens and wanted their children and grandchildren to never forget how fortunate we all were to live in this country. They had never known freedom like this before.
I live in a part of the country that depended on immigrant Chinese to come here to build the railroads in the west. They, too, had Chinese schools for their children, but it only meant those children had to attend two schools — the Chinese school to learn their family language and culture; the American schools to learn the lessons that would serve them best as they took their places in the neighborhoods they would live in and in the business life of America. What are the Arab children getting prepared for?
Just wondering.
Denise, you might ask that question of the Saudi Ambassador to the United States….though you’d probably never get the answer you’re looking for. I’m with you!
Jersey Girl,
You are right in your conclusion about treatment in Muslim countries. My parents lived on an American Compound in Saudi Arabia for four years. While there, my mom would tell me of women friends of hers who were shipped home because the women dared to drive a car outside of the compound, or were dressed immodestly. Not allowed.
They knew Catholic priests who were ‘deported’ because they dared say mass for the Sri Lankins outside of the American Compound, even though only Catholics lived in that compound (but they did not have permission to practice their religion there). The priests knew the risks, but deemed giving access to the sacraments were worth it.
They knew Saudi’s who had never heard that there was any other religion other than Islam, and were shocked when they learned my parents did not worship Allah (to them, any god other than that revealed in Islam was NOT Allah).
No, equal treatment is not given in Muslim countries, even in ‘moderate’ friendly countries such as Saudi Arabia.
Peace
Jim Elliott <>< Florida