More Problems At The Islamic Saudi Academy

Previous Northern Virginiastan postings about the Islamic Saudi Academy are HERE.

The problems with the school just keep adding up!

Photo Credit: the Washington Post
From this June 27, 2008 article by Patrick Poole at Pajamas Media (via Jihad Watch):

The controversial school funded by the Saudi Embassy had its corporate charter revoked in 2004 and has never filed required tax forms with the IRS.

...[A] review of the corporate records on file with the Virginia State Corporation Commission finds that the Islamic Saudi Academy’s corporate charter was terminated by the state on December 27, 2004. There is no indication from state records that the incorporation has been revived or renewed, and the last corporate report the school has filed with the state of Virginia that we could find was 2004 — the same year its corporate charter was terminated. A check of corporations in neighboring District of Columbia and Maryland found nothing for the academy.

[...]

...As the academy has forfeited its Virginia incorporation and is now operating as a d/b/a of the embassy, and considering that the school is funded by the embassy, operates on property owned and leased by the embassy, the embassy speaks publicly on its behalf, and it uses Saudi government curriculum, it seems impossible to conclude anything but that it is solely an entity of the Saudi government controlled entirely by the Saudi Embassy in Washington DC — a position directly in opposition to the present claims of the State Department.

Our investigation also found that at no time has the Islamic Saudi Academy ever filed an IRS Form 990, which is required of every tax exempt organization, including private schools. And according to IRS Publication 78, at no time has the school ever requested or received a tax exemption letter from the IRS. Nor, apparently, has it ever filed corporate taxes with the US government as would be required if it were an entity independent from the Saudi embassy, as it has no recognized tax exemption.

If the school was a separate corporation as State Department officials have repeatedly claimed, it would have to have an active corporate charter (which it doesn’t appear to have since December 2004), and it would either have to file IRS Form 990s if it were operating as a tax exempt organization, or file tax returns if it were operating for-profit. That has not happened in either case according to our investigation. Rather, all evidence indicates that the Saudi Embassy is in full corporate control of the school, and it is operating entirely under its agency, which makes the school subject to the Foreign Missions Act and under the authority of the State Department. If it isn’t part of the Saudi Embassy, it seems that the academy is operating illegally.

This new evidence doesn’t give much leeway to the State Department to shirk the matter.

Read the entire article.

Apparently, in addition to the school's other problems, the school's charter was revoked and some required IRS filings were not done. Surprise, surprise! NOT!

Meanwhile, go HERE to see the MEMRI clip of Al-Jazeera's report on the Islamic Saudi Academy. At marker 2:28 on the clip, you will hear the word "madrassah," defined as follows by the American Heritage Dictionary:

A building or group of buildings used for teaching Islamic theology and religious law, typically including a mosque.

Those who have read this web page by Daniel Pipes, also know about other connotations for the word "madrassah."

The Islamic Saudi Academy (a madrassah) is coming under long-needed scrutiny. At this point, a Google search of the school yields over 9000 hits, and the number of hits increases every day.

Predictably, Moslems are complaining about the scrutiny of the school, never mind ISA's broken promises about revising the offending textbooks as well as various other problems at the school. From the MEMRI transcript for the above-linked video:

[T]his is a nightmare for the families of the students enrolled in the academy. This pressure is exerted by several Congressmen, known for their great hostility towards Arabs and Muslims.

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What should be said about a commission that some say is unconstitutional and contradicts the very meaning of its name? This commission [which recently issured the report on the textbooks] calls upon all countries of the world to respect freedom of religion there, while the commission itself violates this freedom on its own land.

Um, ISA supporters, remove the beam from your own eye before trying to remove the speck from another's eye.