Barack Obama is now debunking a story about attending a Muslim religious school, perhaps a madrassa that espoused a radical form of Islam, while he was a child living in Indonesia, according to ABC News.

“The notion that somehow, at the age of 6 or 7, I was being trained for something other than math, science and reading is ludicrous,” the Illinois senator and presidential contender told an ABC affiliate in Chicago, WLS-TV, earlier in the week.

Obama lived in Indonesia for a few years with his mother and step-father, an Indonesian man.

False stories about Obama have been circulating for awhile and got repeated during a “Fox and Friends� round table last month. Obama described them as a smear.

It doesn’t say much for the media that the stories weren’t checked before Fox spread them further. Or that Obama has to address them at all.

On Monday, CNN filed a story from Indonesia and found that the school he attended was a public school that did not focus on religion, according to the deputy headmaster. Most Indonesians are Muslims, but Christians, Buddhists and Confucians also attended the school, one of Obama’s classmates told CNN.

Obama also attended a Catholic school there.

Other points:

He is a Christian who attends the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

His father was born Muslim but as an adult became an atheist, according to Obama.

His stepfather, whom he writes about in “Dreams from My Father,” followed a form of Islam that made room for other faiths, he says.

Photo: In this undated handout photo made available by the SDN Menteng School 1, Obama is shown circled in yellow in a group photo during a graduation ceremony at the SDN Menteng 1 school in Jakarta, Indonesia. Obama attended the school when he was a child living in Indonesia. (AP Photo/SDN School Menteng 1)