Debate Erupts Over Muslim School in Virginia

By THEO EMERY
June 10, 2009

FAIRFAX, Va. — 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. the rest