Hearts and Minds

[4thofeleven]

"There have been 7,000 madrasses built along that border [Afghanistan/Pakistan]. We should be helping them build schools to compete for those hearts and minds of the people in the region so that we're actually able to take on terrorism"
   - Senator Joe Biden, 2008 Vice Presidential Debate

Alright, here's the thing. Madrassa? It means 'school' or 'university'. It's Arabic, meaning literally 'place where learning is done', and it's been adopted as a loan word in a number of languages, including Farsi, Urdu, Turkish, and Indonesian. What it does not mean - in any of these languages - is 'religious school' or 'Islamic school'.

Now, granted, general foreign words are often used in English in a more specific sense, to refer to things specifically from that country; Sombrero and Salsa are two obvious examples. Still, the use of Madrassa in an unmodified sense bothers me; if Biden had said 'seven thousand fundamentalist madrassas built' or 'Taliban-run madrassas', I wouldn't have an issue, but as it is the use of the term carries the implication that all schools in the Arabic-speaking and Arabic influenced world are terrorist indoctrination centres...

In other debate observations - Castro must be pleased to see that he still ranks a mention as a threat to the US...