A nonprofit group is distributing 9/11 lesson plans to schools across the country that never name Osama bin Laden, never mention al-Qaeda as the perpetrator of the attacks, and never use the word “Islam,” according to a report from The Daily Wire.
The curriculum from the 9:57 Project spans 94 pages and has been used by school districts including Pineville and Corbin in Kentucky. Its lessons emphasize human-interest stories from the day and the hardships endured during the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, while avoiding the identity of the attackers entirely. Al-Qaeda appears just once in the material — in a passage noting that a service member was missed by his family because he was “fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan against al-Qaeda.”
Fairfax County Faces Backlash
The curriculum first drew national attention after Fox News revealed that Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia used a 9/11 lesson plan whose opening section was titled “Responding to Racism, Hate, and Bias against Muslims and Middle Eastern People.” That plan instructed teachers to “leverage a critical lens with students” and told them to avoid “center[ing] the extremists or the acts of the extremists,” instead urging them to “create safe spaces for Muslim and Middle Eastern students.”
Superintendent Michelle Reid responded Friday, saying she was “reviewing our materials as we value feedback from our FCPS community,” and pointed to outside resources, including materials from the 9:57 Project, which she described as an association with a mission to connect veterans with students.
The 9:57 Project itself says it “provides six lessons on 9/11 and its effects.” Its founders — Peter Findler, an administrator at the Wakefield School in The Plains, Virginia, and John Hamilton, an Army veteran — did not respond to a request for an interview from The Daily Wire.
Local Outrage and a Single Dissent
Fairfax County’s proximity to the Pentagon and its large military community have made the curriculum especially contentious. Only one of the 12 school board members objected. Mateo Dunne, whose constituents include residents of Fort Belvoir, told The Daily Wire he was outraged.
“As someone who witnessed the aftermath of the attack on the Pentagon and as a military dad, I am outraged that Fairfax County Public Schools directed educators and schools to teach our children that 9/11 was about ‘Racism, Hate, and Bias against Muslims and Middle Eastern People,'” Dunne said. “This is a gross mischaracterization of our history that resembles the worst propaganda propagated by our foreign adversaries.”
Former Attorney General Jason Miyares weighed in on social media, comparing the omission to teaching Pearl Harbor without mentioning the Japanese Empire. “It’s that absurd,” he said.
The Broader Pattern
According to The Daily Wire, the concealment of 9/11’s perpetrators is not confined to liberal enclaves. When PragerU asked college students who carried out the attacks, many could not answer and appeared uncomfortable. One student guessed “Israel.”
The outlet framed the 9:57 Project’s curriculum as the 9/11 equivalent of the 1619 Project, arguing it spreads a revisionist history through a nonprofit model that appeals to teachers who lack the time to write their own lessons.
Fairfax County’s own history complicates the picture. The 9/11 hijackers attended the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Fairfax County, where the imam was Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaeda operative later killed in Yemen on orders from former President Barack Obama. Al-Awlaki was hired by mosque director Esam Omeish, whose daughter, Abrar Omeish, later served on the school board. Just before the 20th anniversary of 9/11, she opposed a motion to honor the victims, instead offering a resolution that devoted one paragraph to the dead Americans and ten to Muslims as victims. That year, at a graduation, she declined to put her hand over her heart during the pledge of allegiance and told graduates to remember their “jihad” as they entered a world of “white supremacy.”
Fairfax also receives additional federal funding for educating military children, yet critics say those students are treated as second-class. In 2022, an FCPS curriculum called for “Identifying Your Privilege,” listing “Military Kids” alongside “Cisgenders” and “Native English Speakers.”
The Daily Wire notes that the district’s lessons on slavery include the race of slave owners and do not tell students that their descendants bear no connection to that history — a contrast the outlet uses to argue that the omission of 9/11’s perpetrators is deliberate.
Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/9-11-lesson-plan-used-by-schools-nationwide-omits-bin-laden-al-qaeda-and-islam