Schools Discussing 9/11 by Teaching About ‘Islamophobia,’ Downplaying al-Qaeda, and Even Assigning bin Laden’s Manifesto

A quarter century after 19 al-Qaeda hijackers murdered 2,977 people in New York, at the Pentagon, and in a Pennsylvania field, new leftist universities, unions, and advocacy groups are teaching American students that the story of September 11 is mainly what happened to Muslims afterward.

According to a new report from the New York Post, University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education’s “Teaching Beyond September 11th,” recommended by education departments in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and Oregon, gives the attacks a single paragraph, counts the hijackers among the dead, never calls them terrorists, and says “the US accused” Osama bin Laden of masterminding the plot, as if his own videos, letters, and war against the United States were a rumor.

The unit then pivots to “Right-Wing Extremism,” “Islamophobia and the Oval Office,” “Surveillance of Muslims,” “The Muslim and African Ban,” and “Muslim Youth and Resistance.”

A lesson on the Danish Muhammad cartoon riots asks students whether the media valued free speech over the fact that the drawings were “offensive and racist.”

The stated goal is to “relate anti-Muslim racism/violence with other forms of racism and violence (e.g. Black Lives Matter; xenophobia, anti-Semitism etc.).”

First responders dying from Ground Zero illness do not make the syllabus.

Additionally, Pittsburgh’s Voices Ethnic Studies materials tell students the attacks produced “increased experiences with racism and Islamophobia” and skip who died and who did it.

A California ethnic studies frame treats 9/11 as a “catalyst” for “more blatant discrimination” and America as a “colonizer.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ New Jersey chapter and Teaching While Muslim built “The Impact of 9/11 on Muslims,” now pushed in CAIR’s 2026-27 K-12 back-to-school guide.

That curriculum describes the perpetrators as “a group self-identifying as AlQaeda hailing from the mountains of Afghanistan,” tells elementary pupils the attacks were “directly influenced by US foreign policy,” and informs high schoolers that al-Qaeda struck over Israel, the Gulf War, and U.S. troops in the Middle East.

CAIR-NJ’s guide talks of “state-sponsored Islamophobia” and the Patriot Act “practically targeted” at Muslims.

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies has called the package victim-blaming in the shadow of the Towers.

An AFT Share My Lesson worksheet uploaded by Brooklyn teacher Adam Feinberg assigns bin Laden’s “Letter to America” and asks ninth-to-twelfth graders why the mass murderer hated Jews, why America is “the worst civilization,” and why he opposed usury.

The National Education Association has circulated Edward Said, blaming the United States and its support for Israel.

Only Arizona and Florida require 9/11 to be taught, and ten other states “encourage” something that can be as simple as a moment of silence.

Zineb Riboua, a Research Fellow at the Hudson Institute, told The Post, “You teach kids that America is responsible for the atrocities around the world to develop a moral framework that can be activated very quickly to get policies that reduce America’s power and sovereignty.”

Gail Silke, whose police officer brother Stephen Driscoll, 38, was killed in the South Tower on 9/11, responded to the attempts at rewriting history by telling The Post, “They’re not affected by it, they’re not in our shoes, and they don’t want to be in our shoes. Those people can kiss my ass.”