03-16-2008, 06:53 PM
Quote:Technically the school he attended was a madrassa. so was the school I attended. as well as the school you attended. The word Madrassa in arabic means school, or place of study. That word has absolutely no connotation of radical islamic ideology, it's only something that xenophobic americans attach to it because it sounds foreign and scary. So lets put this together: Obama lived, for a large portion of his childhood, in a place with a large muslim population. He went to school there. OH NOES!!! whatever are we going to do!
What's the word for school in Indonesian?
Arabic is usually only used for religious purposes in a non-Arab muslim country. If a school was called a "madrassa," wouldn't that be to designate its religiosity?
If I said I attended "school" today, I would mean a secular school. If I said I attended "a madrassa" today, I would mean an Islamic religious school, because nobody else in Canada uses "madrassa" to mean anything else. I would assume the same is true in Indonesia, but perhaps not, I'm just guessing.
-Jester