Thanks again, Muhammed

Submitted by Gandydancer (United States), Feb 12, 2008 at 18:28

Your response on "Madrasah" is very informative. If you haven't got thoroughly sick of this subject, I wonder if you'd be willing to continue this dialog on the "discussion" page of the Antiwikipedia article I referred you to, as I am sure I will have more questions and the exchanges can proceed more quickly without the thread moderation that preceeds posting here.

Elsewhere (in his other book?) Obama refers to Mentang Besuki as a "predominantly Muslim school"., so I don't think he's unclear in his understanding -- he just misspoke in the quote you refer to.

And I don't think it's correct to say Obama "practiced" Islam merely because he had to recite suryas. My complaint is against a media which, IMHO, wants the answer to Katie Couric's self-censored question ("Is America ready to elect a president who grew up praying in a mosque?") to be "yes" but prefers to be parsimonious with the truth rather than risk a "no".

One more question: When you learned the prayer ritual in elementary school was there any distinction between the acts of prayer you engaged in as part of learning the ritual and "real" prayer? E.g., did it have to be in the direction of Mecca, or was that not important as you were just "learning the ritual"?

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