Statement by Faith J. H. McDonnell, March 18, 2009 To the Planning Commission Public Hearing on SE 2008-SP-025 – Islamic Saudi Academy

My name is Faith McDonnell. I am a resident of Fairfax County and I work as an international human rights advocate for Muslims and Christians, Ba’hai and Falun Gong, and particularly for the people of Sudan. I speak in opposition to the Islamic Saudi Academy’s application for a permit to build a new school at their location on Popes Head Road.

The land on which the Islamic Saudi Academy is built is zoned R-C and WS. As the Planning Commission is well aware, and has itself made clear to various other applicants from churches, schools, etc. who ask for modification of this extremely restricted designation, the Islamic Saudi Academy property and the surrounding area has been designated “Residential-Conservation” and is placed within a protected watershed. According to County documents, “this is an area of the Occoquan watershed that was designated by the Board of Supervisors as being environmentally sensitive for the protection of the Occoquan Reservoir.”

No matter what accommodations are made by the Islamic Saudi Academy or its governing Saudi Embassy, the fact remains that they intend to put 900 children, at the least, on a property that is zoned to be low occupancy, purposely to protect the greater Potomac watershed. I refer the Planning Commission to a previous request on the very same property in which the County and the Planning Commission refused an application from another school, Fairfax Christian School. The record of the United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit, in 1991, says in referring to the denial of permit to Fairfax Christian School: the “major environmental concern related to the proposed development” was “the lack of protection of the environmental quality” and that the “development could not be considered environmentally sensitive” and that it did not “help preserve the ecological integrity” of the watershed. The Court continued that “both the Planning Commission and the professional planning staff continuously opposed granting the exemptions for the proposed uses suggested and that they offered legitimate land use explanations for their decisions: protecting environmental quality, controlling storm water runoff, maintaining population density, protecting the comprehensive plan, and preventing development so intense that it was inconsistent with the development of the adjoining area.”

In conclusion, I would submit that there is another legitimate land use reason for denying the application of the Islamic Saudi Academy, and that is that land should not be used in a way that possibly undermines all for which the United States of America has always stood. The Academy was founded, funded, and is controlled by the Saudi Embassy. It uses Saudi Ministry of Education textbooks that sanction murder against Jews, adulterers (presumably just the women), homosexuals, and converts from Islam. These texts, because they are based on Shariah also encourage sedition against the sovereignty of the United States government – no government, even the one which has granted you ability to purchase land, to live in freedom and peace, and to enjoy the benefits of democracy, can be higher than Islamic law. Not all Muslim schools use these textbooks from Saudi Arabia, or embrace Wahabism, but the Academy does.

This is not an ecological land use reason, but it is a land use reason. And it leaves the Planning Commission of the Fairfax County government accountable for whatever takes place. I hope you will use wisdom.