ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — Twelve U.S. senators and a federal commission want to shut it down, and its most virulent critics have dubbed it “Terror High.”

The teachers, administrators and about 900 students at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Fairfax County have heard the allegations for years — after the Sept. 11 attacks and then a few years later when a class valedictorian admitted he joined al-Qaeda. Now the school finds itself on the defensive again. Last month, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom issued a report saying the academy should be closed until it can conduct a review of the curriculum and textbooks. Abdalla al-Shabnan, the school’s director general, says the criticism of the school — where the courses are taught in English and Arabic — is based not on evidence, but on preconceived notions of the Saudi educational system. The school, serving pre-kindergarten through grade 12 on campuses in Fairfax and Alexandria, receives financial support from the Saudi government, and the textbooks are based on a Saudi curriculum. While there are other Muslim high schools in the United States, the academy is the only one with this kind of a relationship to Saudi Arabia. Al-Shabnan said the school significantly modified those textbooks to remove passages deemed intolerant of other religions. And the Saudis themselves initiated their own textbook reforms several years ago in response to criticism. At an open house earlier this month in which the school invited reporters to tour the school and meet with students and faculty, al-Shabnan seemed weary of the constant questions. “I didn’t think we’d have to do this,” al-Shabnan he said of the open house. “Our neighbors know us. They know the job we are doing.”

Indeed, many people familiar with the school say the accusations are unfounded. Fairfax County Supervisor Gerald Hyland, whose district includes the academy, has defended the school and arranged for the county to review the textbooks to put questions about the curriculum to rest. That review is ongoing. The academy’s Alexandria campus is leased from Fairfax County. The schools that regularly compete against the academy in interscholastic sports — many of them small, private Christian schools — are also among the academy’s strongest defenders. Robert Mead, soccer coach at Bryant Alternative High School, a public school in the Alexandria section of Fairfax county, said the academy’s reputation has been unfairly marred by people who have not even bothered to visit the school. “We’ve never had one altercation” on the soccer field with the academy’s players, Mead said. “My guys are hostile. Their guys keep fights from breaking out.”

The controversy surrounding the school has been mirrored elsewhere in the U.S. In New York City, the Khalil Gibran International Academy — a public school named after a Lebanese-Christian poet who wrote about peace — quietly opened its doors in September following criticism that it would indoctrinate young students in a manner akin to the hardline madrassas, or religious schools, in some parts of the Muslim world. The school — the first Arabic-themed public school in the U.S. — was forced to change venue before it opened. A new head was also appointed after its first principal, a Muslim of Yemeni descent, resigned amid complaints about her refusal to condemn a youth group’s use of the word “intifada,” which commonly refers to the Palestinian uprising against Israel. The new principal is a Jewish woman who does not speak Arabic. In Virginia, the Islamic academy opened in 1984 and stayed out of the spotlight until the Sept. 11 attacks, which focused attention on the Saudi educational system. Critics said the Saudis propagate a severe version of Islam in their schools. The academy, as an offshoot of the Saudi system, also was scrutinized. Those criticisms resurfaced in 2005, when a former class valedictorian, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was charged in U.S. court with joining al-Qaeda while attending college in Saudi Arabia. He was convicted on several charges, including plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush, and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Most recently, the commission issued its scathing report after saying it was rebuffed in its efforts to obtain textbooks to verify claims by the Saudi government that the textbooks had been reformed in recent years. The commission recommended that the academy be shut down until the textbooks were reviewed to ensure they do not promote intolerance. Since the report last month, the academy gave copies of the textbooks to the Saudi embassy, which in turn provided them to the State Department. The commission, an independent federal agency created by Congress, wants to conduct its own review and is waiting to get the books from the State Department. On Nov. 15, a dozen U.S. senators, including Democrat Charles Schumer of New York and Republican Jon Kyl of Arizona, wrote a letter to the State Department urging it to act on the commission’s recommendations. And on Tuesday, Reps. Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican, and Steve Israel, a New York Democrat, introduced legislation to enact the commission’s recommendations regarding the academy into law. “All the peace treaties and diplomatic agreements in the world will not succeed as long as children are taught how to hate,” Israel said in a statement. Michael Cromartie, the commission’s chairman, said he does not question the character of the student body or the faculty, most of whom are Christian. The commission is focused specifically on the textbooks, and has legitimate concerns given the problems that have been endemic in the Saudi curriculum, he said. “It’s not about whether the students are civil to their opponents on a ball field. It’s about the textbooks,” he said. Cromartie said significant revisions need to be made to the texts, based on what he knows about the original Saudi material. He believes the books will provide a good window into the general atmosphere at the school. “If the textbooks have been cleaned up, we’ll be the first to say it,” he said. Academy officials have acknowledged that some of the original Saudi textbooks use intemperate language, but say they have made significant modifications at the academy to remove offensive passages. They have, for instance, removed instructions from teachers’ versions of first-grade textbooks an excerpt instructing teachers to explain “that all religions, other than Islam, are false, including that of the Jews, Christians and all others.”

At the open house, officials offered a tour of the school. The academy runs separate boys and girls schools for children in grades 3 and up, but Advance Placement classes are coed. Many high school girls wear head scarves, but others do not. The library includes English and Arabic language books. A library video on the Crusades, a historical era in which Western and Islamic interpretations vary greatly, is produced by The History Channel as opposed to an Arab broadcaster. Also in the library is the Muslim World League Journal, a publication produced by the Muslim World League, a Saudi organization considered closely aligned with the kingdom’s royal family. In various U.S. court cases, government officials have linked the Muslim World League to Muslim extremists. Dozens of students, teachers and parents attended the open house, eager to clear up what they see as a misimpression of the school. High school seniors said they worry about the news accounts hurting their college applications. Most students said they were shocked when they heard that a government panel had recommended shutting down the school. Omar Talib, a student in his final year at the school, said the school caters to students from across the Muslim world, not just Saudis. It makes no judgments on other religions or against Shi’a Islam, as some critics have contended. “There’s no opinion” from academy teachers on the validity of Shi’a or Sunni sects, Talib said. “It’s just basic Islam.”

“I have four children at this school. I’ve never heard them say, ‘Mom, today we learned we should kill the Jews,'” said Malika Chughtai of Vienna, Virginia. “If I heard that kind of talk, I would not have them here.”