Jan 23, 2007 2:08pm

Obama’s school mystery solved

Unlike INSIGHT MAGAZINE or Fox News, CNN took the unusual step of ACTUALLY REPORTING ABOUT the school in Indonesia where Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, was educated from ages 6-8 to see what kind of school it was.

It’s not a madrassa. "This is a public school. We don’t focus on religion," Hardi Priyono, deputy headmaster of the Basuki school, said to CNN. "In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don’t give preferential treatment."
CNN also interviewed one of Obama’s classmates, Bandug Winadijanto, who said the school isn’t and has never been an "Islamic school. It’s general…There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian. … So that’s a mixed school."

The name of the school, Obama’s office tells ABC News, is Sekolah Dasar Negeri 04 Besuki. Which translates as Government Elementary School #4, in the city of Besuki.

You may recall we covered the SLIMING OF OBAMA on this subject in a blog entry last week. Would have loved to have flown to Indonesia myself to check it out.

– jt

User Comments

Lynn Sweet, the sage and experienced political reporter of the “Chicago Sun Times,” also set the record straight about Sen. Obama’s schooling in her column today, which is definitely worthwhile reading.

Posted by: chuck | January 23, 2007, 3:23 pm 3:23 pm

Oh. With a name like Obama I thought he was one of the Crimson Tide.

Posted by: Mexigogue | January 23, 2007, 3:44 pm 3:44 pm

How quickly racism comes to the forefront. Fox News (and many other overtly biased outlets) should drop “news” from their name and simply say what they are – an entertainment outlet.

Posted by: Eamon | January 24, 2007, 8:21 am 8:21 am

Research suggests he may have attended a school of Wasabism, a form of Zen Islam said to be hot.

Posted by: Bill | January 24, 2007, 8:04 pm 8:04 pm

It’s not necessarily racism to want to know whether Obama Hussein attended a “madrassah” (which, as ABC NEWS has confirmed since it does have at least one class on Islam, it could be considered a “madrassah” using a broad definition of the word). Most of the terrorists who are going to kill Americans over the next couple decades will have been brainwashed in one. However, unless “Sekolah Dasar Negeri 04″ has undergone a radical change since 1967-1971 (the relevant time period), it probably was not that type of extremist Wahhabism though.

Posted by: Jake | January 30, 2007, 5:22 pm 5:22 pm

Leave a Reply

Do you have more information about this topic? If so, please click here to contact the editors of ABC News.