King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is calling for a respectful dialogue between monotheistic “brothers in faith.” He warned against atheism and the disintegration of the family, the loss of morals and decline of religion: “If God wills it, we will then meet with our brothers from other religions, including those of the Torah and the Gospel… to come up with ways to safeguard humanity.”

He says the country’s top clerics have given their permission to the plan. Coming from a country that bans non-Muslim religious services and executes Muslim apostates, this is encouraging news that Muslims, Jews and Christians all welcome.

AP says quotes Michael Cromartie, chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religions Freedom: “It’s a courageous thing for the king to do. … It’s a start to have an open and free dialogue in a country with a reputation for religious oppression.” The Jerusalem Post interviewed Rabbi Yona Metzger, who also expressed optimism: “If an imam in Saudi Arabia sends out a message of restraint and peace, that could save the life of a Jew in Paris.”

Saudi newspaper al-Jazirah welcomed the dialogue too: “The dialogue could clear up some facts about our religion, far from the distortions that extremists and fanatics have caused.”

But Jihad Watch is still suspicious: “Islamic law is reciprocity-impaired when it comes to respect. It is not “respect” in the general sense; rather, Islam is to be respected, and will deal with other faiths according to what it believes is the divinely-ordained order of things.” Reuters quotes others expressing skepticism that the dialogue will actually take place.

Still, the announcement may have mollified some during a week when religious tensions ran high. Geert Wilder released his anti-Islam short film this week. In the Netherlands, Muslims are rioting over anti-Islam cartoons, and there’s a heated debate over the wisdom of Magdi Allam’s public and defiant Easter baptism.

Saudi Arabia’s vice squad is cracking down on Valentine’s Day, purging the country of hearts and red roses to prevent the inappropriate “mingling” of men and women. In Riyadh this weekend, officials from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice warned shopkeepers and confiscated anything colored scarlet, a color symbolizing love.

The ban is more significant than Westerners might assume — a measure of the strength of the mutawwa’s hold on Saudi citizens. It’s bad enough that Valentine’s Day is a Western holiday, but it also defies Saudi segregation of the sexes. United Press International quotes Saudi Sheikh Khaled Al-Dossari: “As Muslims we shouldn’t celebrate a non-Muslim celebration, especially this one that encourages immoral relations between unmarried men and women.”

Last year, the Weekly Standard saw growing Valentine’s Day lenience as one of the “first faint signs of a movement away from tyranny.” In 2007, the religious militia let non-Muslims celebrate the holiday behind closed doors, a significant concession for officers who barge into foreigners’ homes to enforce alcohol bans. Muslims still slipped around the ban and red roses sold out. This year, BBC says Saudis are buying roses early or on the black market, and florists are delivering bouquets in the middle of the night. Saudis are slipping away to Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates to celebrate.

Saudi Arabia isn’t the only country without a sense of romance. Today, Kuwaiti officials who monitor “negative alien practices” will discuss a ban on Valentine’s Day, in the interests of stopping the “spreading of moral corruption.” In India, Hindu extremists are burning Valentine’s Day cards and chanting, “Down with Valentine!” in a stand for “civilized love and affection.”

Despite the venom, romance lives. In the New York Times today, Rajaa Alsanea says Saudi sweethearts may not be able to spend time alone without getting 200 lashes for mingling, but they still fall in love over the Internet or by cell phone, exchanging gifts through servants. “All these strictures do not mean that Saudis don’t long for love,” Alsanea says. “Still, romantics dream of that surprise on Valentine’s Day.”

What kind of school following Osama bin Laden’s severe strain of Wahhabi Islam would hire principally Christian instructors? And what kind of Christian would work there?

Recent Associated Press and Washington Post stories have suggested an answer to these puzzlers: the Islamic Saudi Academy — the private, Saudi-run and -funded school in a Washington suburb that a federal committee and 12 U.S. senators say ought to be shut down until questions about the school’s curriculum can be answered. The AP’s Matthew Barakat has written that “most” of the school’s faculty is Christian. WoW was unable to reach him, but his source appears to be the school’s director, Abdalla Al-Shabnan, plus possibly several teachers. Barakat has been writing for weeks about the drama unfolding at “Terror High,” as some have dubbed it, and toured the facility.

The Washington Post meanwhile quoted the assistant principal of the girls’ school — who would have to share some responsibility in making sure curriculum on Islam was taught to the Saudi Ministry of Education’s satisfaction — saying she’s a “devout Christian.” She is, so far, the only self-proclaimed Christian at ISA to do so.

By e-mail yesterday, a spokeswoman for ISA would only confirm that the school “does hire Christians.” She intimated, however, that no one at ISA knows if Christians represent a majority on staff because, as an equal-opportunity employer, the school doesn’t hire “based on the applicant’s race, religion or gender.” But she ignored how a school following the standard Saudi protocol of separating boys from girls could not have a de facto hiring process based on gender, or why ISA would even want to pursue a policy of employing Christians, whom the school would have to trust to actively and irreconcilably contradict their own faith every day to adhere to the institution’s.

It further seems odd that an academy where more than a quarter of the students’ parents are from Saudi Arabia — a country where simply not being Muslim runs citizens afoul of the law’s very long arm — would chance hiring instructors whose religious ideology is by definition heresy to the paying parents’ philosophy. Up until a few weeks ago, the academy’s Web site said here that its Arabic program “follows the curriculum, syllabus, and materials established by the Saudi Ministry of Education.”

The school’s director, though, told the Post not to worry; he, not the Saudi government, “is in charge.” Ironically, when the ISA lost its accreditation in 2002 with both the local Virginia Association of Independent Schools and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, that took on new meaning; its curriculum is no longer subject to the review of any governing organization — besides the Saudi Ministry of Education and, now, a federal committee.

This week, libraries nationwide are celebrating Banned Books Week. The American Library Association names And Tango Makes Three - a children’s book about a same-sex penguin couple who hatch their own baby penguin - the book challenged most often in 2006. But how did the Bible, a historically banned book, fare over the past 12 months?

November, 2006: British Christians accused campus authorities of driving their beliefs underground. They cited examples dating back to October 2005, when Edinburgh University banned the Bible from residence halls because it was “discriminatory” and unwelcoming to students of other faiths.

December, 2006: A British airline banned Bibles for airline personnel flying to Saudi Arabia, afraid of upsetting Muslims with non-Islamic religious material. A stewardess challenged the ban.

January, 2007: In Burnaby, Canada, the school board banned Gideon International’s distribution of free Bibles to elementary school students. School trustee Ron Burton told CBC news, “I think people see the school system as a haven where there is no religion, there is no politics.”

April, 2007: In Turkey, Muslims murdered three employees of a Bible publishing house, binding their hands and feet and slitting their throats. Protesters had targeted the publishing house and threatened its employees before the attack, one of “a string of attacks on Turkey’s Christian community,” according to the Associated Press.

August 22, 2007: A federal appeals court upheld a Bible ban in Annapolis, Maryland, and Gideon International can no longer distribute free Bibles to fifth-graders in South Iron Elementary School.