Schily Reaffirms Support for Arab Academy

German Interior Minister Otto Schily has reaffirmed his government’s support for the Bonn-based King Fahd Academy, which is funded by Saudi Arabia, and denounced a media campaign against it. Schily said the school, which faced closure recently because a member of the staff was found to have preached potentially damaging fundamentalist ideas, had a role in promoting inter-faith dialogue. “The King Fahd Academy in Bonn embodies peaceful coexistence and dialogue between Islam and Christianity,” Schily said in a statement. The academy has since been reorganized following the intervention of the local authorities. The school is now overseen by a panel composed of officials from the Saudi Embassy, representatives of local government agencies in Bonn and Cologne and representatives from the school as part of the newly-constituted Arab-German Committee.