Talk:Madrasah
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[edit] Initial discussion
58.65.179.193 07:35, 24 March 2007 (UTC)The article on Pakistani religious seminaries is a good introduction to this interesting subject. It need not be merged with the article on madrasah. The spelling used in the Pakistani context represents the pronunciation of this Arabic word in Urdu.58.65.179.193 07:36, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Anybody with some knowledge of this subject want to take a crack at this? -- Zoe —Preceding comment was added at 12 April 2003
- The last paragraph,
- "Recently, some people have come to see madrassas in a negative light, amid accusations that many of them indoctrinate students with extremist views. Some have accused extremist madrassas and "Deobandi seminaries" of fostering the Taliban's reactionary policies during its rule in Afghanistan. In reality almost 65 percent of the Taliban officials and workers at a lower level had never attended any religious school. Most of the faculty members at Kabul University graduated in the United States of America or in European countries and gained years of experience abroad."
- claiming that madrassas have been unfairly maligned as a means of indoctrinating innocents with fundamentalism, strikes me as opinionated and without any apparent basis. The now dead link which was supposed to corroborate it is just an editorial from someone who is clearly a proponent of Islam. Here's the editorial:
- Here is a link which clarifies what the media is saying is the problem with SOME madrassas - they are Saudi-funded indoctrination tools.
- Clearly, it's fine to say in the Wikipedia entry something like "Not all madrassas are bad.", but it currently draws kind of a biased picture. Particularly the last sentence is just a plainly defensive non sequitur. When Saudi-funded madrassas are labelled a threat, no one is thinking of Kabul University.
- I'm going to echo Zoe's comment (no idea when it was made) and ask for someone better informed to make judgments here. -- drw, 2004.Oct.07 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.142.93.226 (talk • contribs) on 7 October 2004
The current entry says: "In reality almost 65 percent of the Taliban officials and workers at a lower level had never attended any religious school." This may be a deceptive statistic. Might it be that almost 65 percent of the Taliban officials and "workers at a lower level" (whatever that refers to) never attended any school at all?
According to the CIA Factbook entry on Afghanistan, the literacy rate (age 15 and over can read and write) was, as of a 1999 estimate, 36% for the total population and 51% for males. I'd guess that most Taliban who attended schools, attended madrassas.
From the current Wikipedia entry on Taliban: "The most influential members, including Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of the movement, were simple village ulema—Islamic religious scholars, whose education was extremely limited and did not include exposure to most modern thought in the Islamic community. Taliban is the Pashtun word for religious students."
and
"Most post-invasion Taliban fighters are new recruits, drawn again from Pakistan's madrassahs (madrassah means "school" in Arabic). The types that are churning out Taliban fighters are more traditional Quranic schools."
Based on all of the above, I am going to remove the final two sentences of the last paragraph of the curent Madrassa entry. ("In reality almost 65 percent of the Taliban officials and workers at a lower level had never attended any religious school. Most of the faculty members at Kabul University graduated in the United States of America or in European countries and gained years of experience abroad.") The first sentence goes beyond biased to, in my opinion, deceptive. The second sentence is irrelevant. And both were taken from an opinion piece (the link for which I will rejuvenate and relabel to give people the opportunity to see an alternative point of view).
There is a place for some replacement sentences giving a rebuttal to the relevance of madrassas to terrorist recruitment, but I will leave that to someone who is sufficiently knowledgeable. -- drw, 2004.Oct.09
- While there is controversy on an issue, I think this encyclopedia should note that there is controversy, perhaps cite references to pro and con auguments and pass on without trying to decide one way or the other - "Wikipedia is not a place to promote points of view" . Andy Macdonald 21:41, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
'It is commonly argued that wherever the governments failed to provide general education to its common citizens, private religious establishments succeeded to take the lead to fill this gap and administer the educational system of the country according to their own religio-philosophical understanding. In this context, a madrasah herewith is referred as an Islamic school for Muslims, just as a parochial school for Roman Catholic children or the yeshiva for orthodox Jews.
Pull the other one. Catholic and similar schools teach religion only as a subject. A madrassa is far closer to a seminary than a school. I am going to edit this after I get some discussion on it. Jim —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.139.23.187 (talk • contribs) 26 August 2006
58.65.179.193 07:19, 24 March 2007 (UTC)This is not a biased article. The author has given an introduction to religious seminaries in Pakistan. This is an important subject so the article should be retained. I feel that the spelling of madrasah used in this article reperesents the way they are pronounced in Pakistan where urdu and Punjabi both do not use the final arabic phoneme as represented in the Arabic spellings.==Page move== I believe that 'Madrassa' should be redirected to 'Madrasah' (as this would be a correct transcription from Arabic!) Does anybody object? David Haberlah 10:05, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
- => well, why not to 'madrasa'? there is no h-sound at the end, as most readers would expect from your suggested spelling (although both are acceptable transcriptions). but the present 'madrassa' is wrong. ARRE—Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.238.5.5 (talk • contribs) on 2 October 2005
I suggested 'Madrasah with 'h' since the word ends with a Tamabutah and not an Alif/ Alif-ya. David Haberlah 04:33, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
- => I think you mean "taa' marbuTa." There's no "Tamabutah." Dumpendebat 05:53, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Madrasah
Madrasah (Arabic: مدرسة) is the Arabic word for school. Any school, not just religious schools, Google's language tools try copy & paste مدرسة then translate from Arabic to Engllish it'll read school. The other way around school translates to المدرسة the extra two letters mean (the), s it translates to the school.--The Brain 15:36, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Weasel Words
Added the weasel words template to the Criticism section, which has phrases like "frequently deemed as" and "has been criticized", without citing sources for the criticism or judgment. I imagine the weasel-worded statements are accurate, but I wanted actual sources when reading the section. Althai 01:46, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Hotbeds of Islamic terrorism
I know I'll be burned for saying this, but the little bit towards the end acknowledging the role schools play in creating and nurturing terrorism (and terrorists) is simply inadequate. It is quite disappointing to see that this website routinely sacrifices truth for the sake of "political correctness". And what I'm saying is not just "Western perception" of schools. The facts speak for themselves. Take David Matthew Hicks for example -- the guy goes to Pakistan to study Islam in a school and couple of months later he ends up actually "studying" AK-47s and bombs instead, in terrorist training camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Afghanistan! Or look at the cases of the countless other terrorists to have been apprehended and their history of "crossing over" into terrorism. Whether you like it or not, the FACT remains that schools, today, are nothing but just breeding grounds for Islamic fanaticism and recruitment centers for terrorists. I strongly suggest that Wikipedia stop its current practice of appeasing or being "politically correct" and concentrate on presenting truthful articles on various subjects, instead. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.200.95.130 (talk) 00:18, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
In the above paragraph, I changed the words 'madrassa' used by the author, to 'school' for a direct translation. Re-reading his propaganda it seems to now hold absolutely no weight. How laughable. :D
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- The idiot is still making edits, that's what bothers me. There are 1 billion Muslims in the world (and countless madrassas), all humans the equal of everyone else. Unfotunately there are far too many cretins like 203.200.95.130.--Matt Lewis (talk) 11:34, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
