مدرسة

Madrasa (مدرسة) comes from the Arabic root d-r-s (to study, to learn). Darasa means to study; mudarris means teacher; madrasa means a place of study — a school. In Arabic, any school is a madrasa. A primary school is a madrasa. A university is a madrasa. A driving school is a madrasa. The word has no religious connotation in its base meaning. It is as neutral as the English word 'school.'

Historically, madrasas were institutions of higher learning in the Islamic world that taught Islamic jurisprudence, theology, Arabic grammar, and sometimes mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. The Nizamiyya madrasa system, established by the Seljuk vizier Nizam al-Mulk in the eleventh century, was a network of state-funded schools across the Islamic world. Al-Azhar in Cairo, founded in 970 CE, is one of the oldest continuously operating educational institutions in the world. It was a madrasa before it was a university.

In English, madrasah (or madrassa, or madrasa — the transliteration varies) acquired a narrow meaning after 2001. Western media used the word almost exclusively for religious schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan associated with militancy. The word became code for 'jihadist training school' in English-language journalism. This meaning does not exist in Arabic, where madrasa simply means school — any school.

The distortion is significant because it affects policy. 'Closing madrasas' sounds reasonable in English, where the word implies extremism. In Arabic, it means 'closing schools.' The gap between the English connotation and the Arabic denotation is one of the most consequential mistranslations in twenty-first-century politics.