The word "madrassa" is Arabic for school, and is commonly used throughout the Arab and Islamic world to refer to any place of learning in the same sense that, in the United States, the word "school" refers to a primary school, a high school or a university. It can be a secular school, a vocational school, a religious school or a technical school.
The negative connotation of the word "madrassa" as it's come to be understood in the English-speaking world--as referring to a place where fundamentalist, Islamic instruction is combined with anti-western vocations, or in the extreme, as a place where terrorists are formed ideologically--is largely an American and British conceit. It is for the most part, but not entirely, inaccurate.
