Meet the Principal

أهلا و سهلا

As salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu

In the winter of 1911, as snow blanketed the hills of Eastern Anatolia, a young Kurdish scholar named Said Nursi convened a meeting with anxious imams and schoolmasters in a village outside of the city of Van. Recent constitutional reforms in the Ottoman Empire had ushered in unexpected change: broader civil liberties, a new parliament, a thirst for scientific innovation, and whispers of secular reform. The imams feared that efforts to reform education would uproot the faith of their students; the schoolmasters worried that clinging to traditional modes of learning would leave their students unprepared for the future. Said Nursi listened to their competing worries and stood up to respond, his words governed by a deep knowledge of the Quran and Sunnah.

He said:

“The light of the conscience is religious sciences. The light of the mind is modern sciences. Combining both manifests the truth. The students’ skills develop further with these two. When they are separated, the former breeds superstition and the latter breeds corruption and skepticism.”

In this critical moment, Said Nursi was not preparing for some inevitable conflict between the Islamic tradition and modern education, rather he was reminding the men who sat before him that the Islamic intellectual tradition already contained the strategies that students would need to flourish in the modern world. His vision was grounded in Quranic conceptions of learning and they echoed Allah’s words in Surah Ale Imran where He described the Ulul Albab, the People of Intellect, as those “who remember Allah while standing, sitting, and lying on their sides” but they also “reflect on the creation of the heavens and the earth.” (3:191) He urged the men who sat before him to build schools that prioritized both dhikr (remembrance of Allah) and fikr (deep inquiry)
as overlapping and integral practices.

Like Said Nursi, we too live in a time of uncertainty and spiritual confusion. We too face an urgent and potent opportunity for rethinking how our schools serve our children. His call to integrate the spiritual and intellectual remains a timeless framework , but the challenge is not merely academic; it is existential. And his answer remains: bring light to both the mind and the heart.

As I prepare for my new role, I have been reflecting deeply on the counsel of Shaykh Said Nursi and both the wisdom and humility he displayed, listening with his heart and mind to the needs of the people. I believe that Washington International Academy is a school that fulfills his vision and I ask that Allah grant me the humility and wisdom needed to lead our school community.

For 25 years WIA has nurtured the intellectual and spiritual development of hundreds of young Muslims. I am honored to have been chosen to lead a school with such a powerful legacy, and I am thrilled to have been entrusted to guide its further development into the premier institution for Islamic education in the DMV.  It is my hope, at our school, Islam will not just be a lens through which our children interpret the world but the fertile soil from which they blossom in it. Towards that objective I have identified five priorities for the 2025-2026 school year

• Integration of traditional Islamic teaching practices that prioritize relational learning, reflective dialogue, and deep inquiry to maximize academic growth for all students
• A new advisory program in the Middle School that will nurture both community and student autonomy under the caring guidance of faculty mentors
• A critical evaluation and mindful revision of our curriculum to ensure that all students at WIA can thrive
• A new service-learning program that will allow our children to apply their knowledge and skills in real world contexts
• A new system of professional support for our teachers including innovative workshops, peer-coaching, and field visits to some of the DMVs most successful schools.

May Allah reward you all for entrusting your children to our care and may He grant us all the tawfiq needed to fulfill the responsibility of nurturing their hearts and minds.

Best,

Anthony Miraj Ahmad Riccio

WIA Principal