Only my teacher was 'terrorized'

Unlike Barack Obama, Sun-Times reporter Rummana Hussain really did attend an Islamic school -- right here in Chicago. They studied, cracked jokes and threw spitballs.

Barack Obama may never have hung out at a madrassa, but I have.

Wait. Don't call Homeland Security. Let me explain.

"Madrassa" in Arabic means school.

While the term is now widely associated with anti-American zealots, most Muslims like me grew up with elders who referred to madrassas as places where children received religious instruction -- sort of like an Islamic version of Hebrew or Sunday school.

At the madrassa across the street from my father's Indian childhood home and at the makeshift madrassa I attended on the Northwest Side in the early 1980s, the focus was on the memorization and proper recitation of the Quran.

Of course, some will always believe that all Muslim schools, by default, specialize in daily instruction on bomb-making and rampant intolerance.

Sen. Obama obviously knows this. Why else would the Democratic presidential hopeful respond so aggressively to the recent improbable rumor that he studied at a "radical" Indonesian madrassa at the age of 6?

Unfortunately, a few in the press, including a weekly columnist for this newspaper, pounced at the allegation as if it were fact, spurring Obama to urge the media to make sure "stories are substantiated."

I agree.

It took me just a couple of hours to contact Southeast Asian experts well-versed in the history of religious extremism in Indonesia to pin down a few points.

Incidentally, in Indonesia, a "madrassa" by definition is an Islamic school with a curriculum that is 70 percent academic and 30 percent religious, according to Terance Bigalke, director of the education program at Honolulu's East-West Center, which specializes in research on the Asia Pacific.

Faith-based studies are emphasized more, Bigalke said, in the traditional Islamic boarding school or "pesantrens."

Fundamentalist madrassas and pesantrens do exist in Indonesia today, he said, but came into being only after the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970s.

Obama had left Jakarta by then.

So in theory, even if Obama had attended a madrassa -- which he didn't -- he wasn't taking Romper Room-style terrorist-in-training classes.

"In 1967-69 (When Obama was a primary school student) I think it is accurate to say that Salafist or radically fundamentalist Islamic institutions in Indonesia were basically nonexistent," Bigalke said. "They certainly were not prominent."

Bigalke added, "There are thousands of madrassas in Indonesia today ranging from tiny to very large, and they span the spectrum from very modernistic and future-oriented to very conservative.

"Overall, however, Indonesian madrassas generally would be viewed in the Muslim world and outside of it as largely moderate and tolerant in their religious orientation."

The deputy headmaster at the public school Obama attended told CNN that administrators there respect religion but "don't give it preferential treatment."

Currently, religion classes are held once a week, but only the majority Muslim students are taught about Islam while the few Christian students learn about their faith.

I guess what bugs me about the whole false madrassa connection to Obama is the knee-jerk assumption that had he received some religious, i.e., Islamic, training as a child, it would somehow compromise his ability to be a good American.

All madrassas, like most religious schools, are not the same. I'm positive there are loads of madrassas around the world that espouse values I may not agree with as an American or a Muslim, but many are innocuous and often the only source of education for the impoverished.

Ironically, a 2005 study co-authored by Peter Bergen, most famous for his televised interview with Osama bin Laden, revealed that the majority of recent terrorists had no ties to madrassas.

In fact, none of the 9/11 pilots -- and none of the secondary planners identified by the 9/11 Commission -- grew up in particularly religious families.

The lead 9/11 pilot, Mohamed Atta, had a degree from a German university.

The 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed studied engineering in North Carolina.

Go figure.

My memories of my madrassa or Quran class mostly center on how we American-born kids would, ahem, "terrorize" our Indian immigrant teacher.

We cracked jokes and threw spitballs as he exasperatedly tried to teach us the correct pronunciation of Quranic Arabic, caressing his beard, watching our every move.

A good friend of mine once walked in with 3-D glasses and kept them on the whole period.

Half the time, "Maulana," as we called the teacher, yelled at me for not being more persistent in getting my younger brother to stop picking his nose or fall asleep.

Toward the end of my madrassa stint, Maulana drew up a top 10 list of the most "badmash" or mischievous students. I ranked third.

In the end, we learned to recite Quran better than we had when we first started classes.

I don't remember Maulana teaching us how to shoot a gun or strap on a suicide bomb. He didn't badmouth those who weren't Muslim.

Or, if he did, it went over our heads. At Christmastime, I remember how a bunch of us who carpooled together got into a huge argument over who would be dropped off first on the day the "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" animated special was on.

I recently asked my younger sister, who is almost a decade younger, if she saw anything untoward during her madrassa days.

She did.

One day, she spotted a boy two seats behind her flossing his teeth . . . with an errant string from his dirty, worn-out socks.

The thought still makes her shudder.

rhussain@suntimes.com