For now, the controversy continues, as does the pressure on local politicians. Michael Frey is on the Board of Supervisors. He voted for the school’s expansion and says he still gets criticized for it. One man approached him at his local supermarket on a Sunday morning. In an aggressive tone, he said he couldn’t believe Frey could consider himself a conservative after voting the way he did.
“I said, ‘I don’t believe anybody who wants local government to be reading texts and making decisions on schools based on what they teach is a conservative,’ ” Frey replied. “To me, that is one of the biggest intrusions you could possibly imagine.”
The State Department agrees. Conservative Christian groups that have lobbied for the school to be closed say that because it’s funded by the Saudi government, the State Department should intervene. But the State Department says ISA is a private school, not a foreign mission, and it has no role in accrediting or managing the school.
Read or listen to it all from Weekend edition this past Sunday.
I used to live within several miles of Pope’s Head Road and the school and I witnessed major demographic changes in Fairfax County, Virginia during the 18 years that I lived there.
Most of the changes were the result of the mobility of American society and the massive influx of immigrants into Fairfax County.
Most of the changes, aside from a greatly increased population density, occurred within a spectrum of ideas and behavior acceptable to most Americans. Most of the incomers to Faifax County asimilated and/or want to assimilate into the mainstream of American society.
However, there are incomers to Faifax County who resist assimilation and who insist on creating ‘islands’ of the culture from which they came before they settled in Faifax County.
These culture ‘islands’ represent a form of colonization and not assimilation. These ‘islands’ are formed as an act of rejection of the culture of the United States. And carried to their logical end will probably result in an insistance that the theocratic legal practices of their homelands become part of the law of the State of Virginia and the United States. This is already a matter of considerable political debate in Great Britain and Canada.
This is a very serious issue on many grounds, not the least of which is the compatibility of their theocratic concepts with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. On the immediate human level it has to do with their view of a child’s rights and our view, their view of a woman’s rights and our view, etc.
Not to refute your point, AnglicanFirst, but could not the ‘culture island’ argument also be made about Hasidic Jewish communities in New York and New Jersey? Of course, their numbers are not growing at the same rate as those of Muslim immigrants, but the principal would seem to be the same.
The Hasidim respect and comply with the law of the land, but I’m not sure the Muslim communities do; especially those which are close-knit.
Well actually not always Cennydd.
Don’t you remember last year’s drive against political corruption netted a rabbi or two. And some of the stories [url=http://failedmessiah.typepad.com]here[/url] are none too edifying.
Of course, there are plenty of law-abiding Hassidic Jews, but I’m simply pointing out that AnglicanFirst’s characterization could be said to apply to sections of Orthodox Jewry.
There are some, perhaps more than a few, similarities between strict Orthodox Jewish communities and strict literalist Islamic communities. I don’t think the Hasidim practice plural marriage, however.
The questions I have about this Islamic school is whether it teaches direct disobedience to American law, in family matters, for instance, and whether it preaches violence towards non-Muslims. Both of those would put it outside the limits of our “freedom of religion” tolerance, I think.
I would surmise that many religions teach that where there is a conflict between secular law and the core principles of the religion, especially in issues related to family life, faithful adherents must place religious fidelity over earthly laws. If that concept is not compatible with “Freedom of Religion” in this country, I suspect that many will find themselves without constitutional protection.