Victim Blaming in the Shadow of the Twin Towers

A community organization that minimizes terrorism is training teachers and developing curriculum for K-12 classrooms.

As we approach the 25th anniversary of the worst terror attack in American history, radical groups are continuing their campaign to shift blame away from the perpetrators and onto the victims. This sort of victim blaming is commonplace in cases of domestic violence. “She pushed my buttons,” an abuser says, or “if he just did what I said this wouldn’t have happened.”

Using the same logic, radicals want teachers to explain that the mass murder of 3,000 Americans occurred because the terrorist leader who planned and executed the attack felt wronged by U.S. foreign policy. And they want teachers to instill this idea even in pre-K students who are just begun learning to read, write, and do arithmetic.

Four years ago, Teaching While Muslim, a New Jersey-based education advocacy group, partnered with the New Jersey branch of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) to create an educator’s guide, “The Impact of 9/11 on Muslims,” along with lesson plans for elementary, middle, and high school students. A CAIR press release said it shared these resources with over 55 public schools in approximately 30 NJ school districts.

An even-handed guide might have emphasized how al-Qaeda subscribed to an extreme and violent version of Islam that permits the killing of civilians. But this is how an elementary school lesson from CAIR-NJ and TWM introduces the subject: “Directly influenced by US foreign policy, the tragic events of 9/11 unleashed a domino effect of events that marked an aggressive shift in U.S. domestic and foreign policy, sparking the War on Terror and an erosion of civil liberties of many Americans.”

The lessons for middle and high school students show a similar determination to avoid focusing on Islamic extremism while framing 9/11 as a response to America’s bad decisions. The lesson for high schoolers explains that al-Qaeda “launched the attacks in response to America’s support of Israel, their involvement in the Persian Gulf War, and the vast presence of the US military in the Middle East” — as if these could ever be reasons to kill thousands of workers in Manhattan office buildings.

TWM purports to be an organization where educators can access resources that are social justice oriented, anti-racist, and anti-Islamophobic. But this version of social justice and anti-racism includes support for “resistance,” what seems like a euphemism of choice for terrorism on behalf of causes they support.  

In a lesson entitled “Art and Action for Palestine” designed for students as young as 4 years old, TWM says Israel was founded to be “a country where rules were mostly fair for Jewish people with White skin” and asks them “Do you know about any unfair rules where we live?” The lesson goes on to explain, as if it were a college seminar, “there’s a BIG word for when Indigenous land gets taken away to make a country, that’s called settler colonialism…how do you think Indigenous people feel when their land gets taken away?”

The lesson even drafts the children into pro-Palestinian activism, “invit[ing] learners to make their own protest signs” after reading “a story of Palestinian kid resistance.” Yet because TWM aligns its lessons with state-level education standards, it has the potential to place problematic curriculum in multiple schools.

When students reach high school, the effort to justify “resistance” becomes more explicit. A lesson on colonization in the United States asks students to compare “Native resistance in Palestine today and how resistance existed in the American Colonies,” asking students to discuss “is resistance terrorism?” Ultimately, this framing of both the United States and Israel as settler-colonial projects conveys that they are illegitimate, and therefore suitable targets for “resistance.”

To be sure, the First Amendment protects every American’s right to have and express their opinions. Yet schools have no business advancing such an agenda. American parents do not send their children to school to be indoctrinated, and taxpayers surely shouldn’t be funding it.

New Jersey parents may want to reach out to their local school district to ensure that material from TWM and CAIR-NJ is not being used, in case any schools in the district received them. But New Jersey’s story should also serve as a warning to parents across the TWM’s reach goes far beyond the Garden State. The National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in the country, shared TWM’s resources with its over 3-million members.

A quarter of a century after 9/11, we still must work to prevent our children from being taught to blame the victims.

Brandy Shufutinsky is Director, Education & National Security, at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.