By Viola Gienger
June 11 (Bloomberg) -- A Saudi government-controlled school in a Washington suburb uses textbooks that explicitly promote violence and intolerance of other religions, according to a U.S. religious-freedom panel that obtained some of the materials.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, established by Congress in 1998, said today it acquired 17 textbooks used at the Islamic Saudi Academy during this academic year after the State Department failed to turn over texts it had received from the Saudi government.
``The most problematic texts involve passages that are not directly from the Koran but rather contain the Saudi government's particular interpretation of Koranic and other Islamic texts,'' the commission wrote in a four-page statement. ``Some passages clearly exhort the readers to commit acts of violence.''
The commission aims to pressure the State Department to hand over the books it received ...
The commission cites two examples of passages that directly encourage violence. One, in a 12th-grade textbook on the Koran, says it is permissible for a Muslim to kill a convert from Islam, as well as ``an adulterer or someone who has murdered a believer intentionally,'' the commission said in its statement today.
....The academy, founded in 1984, has developed a growing home- study department for education and testing of Saudi students in several states. More than 90 percent of students go on to study at American universities, according to the school's Web site.
