Alexandria, Va. ? Its most virulent critics have dubbed it “Terror High,” and 12 U.S. senators and a federal commission want to shut it down.

The teachers, administrators and 900 students at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Fairfax County have heard the allegations for years – after the Sept. 11 attacks and later, when a class valedictorian admitted he had joined al-Qaida.

Now the school is on the defensive again, with a report issued last month by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom saying the academy should be closed pending a review of its curriculum and textbooks.

Abdalla al-Shabnan, the school’s director general, says criticism of the school is based not on evidence but on preconceived notions of the Saudi educational system.

The school, serving grades K-12 on campuses in Fairfax and Alexandria, receives financial support from the Saudi government, and its textbooks are based on Saudi curriculum. Critics say the Saudis propagate a severe version of Islam.

But al-Shabnan said the school modified those textbooks to remove passages deemed intolerant of other religions. Among the changes, officials removed from teachers’ versions of first-grade textbooks an excerpt explaining “all religions, other than Islam, are false, including that of the Jews, Christians and all others.”

Many people familiar with the school say the accusations are unfounded. Fairfax County Supervisor Gerald Hyland, whose district includes the academy, has defended it and arranged for the county to review the textbooks. That review is under way. The academy’s Alexandria campus is leased from Fairfax County.

Schools that regularly compete against the academy in interscholastic sports – many of them small, private Christian schools – are 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 haven’t bothered to visit the school.

The academy opened in 1984 and stayed out of the spotlight until the Sept. 11 attacks. Criticisms were revived in 2005, when a former class valedictorian, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was charged with joining al-Qaida while attending college in Saudi Arabia. He was convicted on several charges, including plotting to assassinate President Bush, and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Since the religious freedom commission’s report, the academy has given copies of its books to the Saudi embassy, which then provided them to the State Department. The commission is waiting to get the books from the State Department.