{"id":1033984,"date":"2026-08-31T00:57:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T00:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1033984\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T00:57:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T00:57:13","slug":"cair-nj-back-to-school-guide-links-9-11-terror-attacks-to-us-israel-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1033984\/","title":{"rendered":"CAIR NJ back to school guide links 9\/11 terror attacks to US Israel support"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/international\/article-905021\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">New Jersey<\/a> branch of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/middle-east\/article-897172\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)<\/a>, the US\u2019s largest Muslim charity, encouraged teaching students that the 9\/11 terror attacks were due to \u201cAmerica\u2019s support of Israel\u201d and said, \u201cterrorism is defined differently by different groups of people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">CAIR-NJ released its new \u201cBack to School Resource Guide\u201d for parents and students for 2026-2027. The guide contains advice for Muslim students regarding their religious rights in schools, a section on \u201cDiscussing Palestine in the classroom,\u201d and a page on \u201cMuslim Studies: 9\/11.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The page reads: \u201cThe catastrophic events of 9\/11 catapulted the Global War on Terror, marking an aggressive shift in US domestic and foreign policy and an erosion of civil liberties through the Patriot Act, which practically targeted Muslims.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">\u201cThe 9\/11 attacks also marked a renewed and egregious \u2018othering\u2019 of Muslims and those who may appear to be Muslim, which has been evident in mainstream media, on campaign trails, in literature and advertising, and even in the classroom.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">CAIR-NJ and Teaching While Muslim (TWM) said they developed a curriculum with tools to help teachers \u201cadopt a more nuanced approach to 9\/11 in their classrooms.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Muslim men, women, and children participate in a mass Eid al-Adha prayer in a park across the street from Yankee Stadium on May 27, 2026, in the Bronx borough of New York City.\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"632\" height=\"492\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/images.jpost.com\/image\/upload\/f_auto,fl_lossy\/c_fill,g_faces:center,h_537,w_822\/735846\"\/>Muslim men, women, and children participate in a mass Eid al-Adha prayer in a park across the street from Yankee Stadium on May 27, 2026, in the Bronx borough of New York City. (credit: Spencer Platt\/Getty Images)<strong>Now-deleted document recovered<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It then features a link to the 9\/11 unit plan website, which has since been deleted by CAIR following earlier reporting by Jewish Onliner.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The CAIR National annual back-to-school guide (slightly different from the NJ one) now also features a note saying: \u201cAn earlier version of the document did not go through proper vetting and included a link to a primary source document that was removed in November 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Jerusalem Post managed to obtain the now-deleted 9\/11 document via the Wayback Machine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The document is intended for use in elementary, middle, and high school social studies and English classes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">In its description of 9\/11, the document said, \u201cA group self-identifying as al-Qaeda hailing from the mountains of Afghanistan launched separate plane hijackings that ended up in different cities, causing the death of almost 3,000 people, and the resulting debris from the fallen towers caused lasting health issues in first responders.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Children&#8217;s guide says 9\/11 launched in response to US support of Israel<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It then cites the 9\/11 Commission Report as saying that al-Qaeda \u201claunched the attacks in response to America\u2019s support of Israel, their involvement in the Persian Gulf War, and the vast presence of the US military in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/middle-east\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Middle East<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">It is important to note that while page 362 of the report does identify US support for Israel and American military presence in the Middle East as among the grievances that helped fuel al-Qaeda\u2019s extremism, it at no point says 9\/11 was in response to these things.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The CAIR-NJ resource then says, \u201cThough 9\/11 was not the first attack on the United States, it was a major event that marked an aggressive shift in US domestic and foreign policy, sparking the War on Terror in the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Furthermore, it says, \u201cTerrorism is defined differently by different groups of people.\u201d While this doesn\u2019t explicitly state that 9\/11 was not terrorism, it does imply it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Moreover, at no point in the resource does it say 9\/11 was an act of terrorism. It says instead that \u201cAmerican Muslims, Islamic scholars, and governments in Muslim-majority countries condemned the attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The unit then argues that 9\/11 resulted in a \u201cstark shift in US policy and state-sponsored Islamophobia in the US and abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">In a sidebar next to this are three bullet points: \u201cNot all terrorists are Muslims, and not all Muslims are terrorists; how a country treats other people is an extension of their values and beliefs; Islam does not advocate for violence.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Osama bin Laden portrayed as freedom fighter<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">It also speaks quite glowingly of Osama bin Laden: \u201cThe US fought the Soviet Union, who had invaded Afghanistan in the 1980s, by supporting the rebels that stood up against the Russian invaders, including a man named Osama bin Laden and people who later formed the Taliban.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">Also interesting is that some of the resource links at the end of the now-deleted document have been deleted or archived as well.<\/p>\n<p>The Post managed to access most of them via archival search engines.<\/p>\n<p>One speaks about the Muslim veil after 9\/11 and says \u201cthe <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpost.com\/diaspora\/antisemitism\/article-906971\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">September 11 terrorist attacks<\/a> transformed the meaning of the Muslim headscarf. It now \u2018marks\u2019 them as representatives of the suspicious, inherently violent, and forever foreign \u2018terrorist other\u2019 in our midst.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph-section article-body-paragraph\">The resource also bizarrely links to the film V for Vendetta, which is about a young woman living in a dystopian society who meets a shadowy freedom fighter plotting to overthrow their tyrannical government, and it also suggests students read the full text of Bin Laden\u2019s \u201cLetter to America.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New Jersey branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the US\u2019s largest Muslim charity, encouraged teaching&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1033985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[79462,5229,17263,12648,187809,8921,556,413798,177010,99,20206,401,50],"class_list":["post-1033984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-9-11","tag-america","tag-anti-israel","tag-antisemitism","tag-cair","tag-diaspora","tag-islam","tag-islamic-antisemitism","tag-islamism","tag-israel","tag-muslims","tag-new-jersey","tag-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117187409699879661","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1033984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1033985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1033984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1033984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1033984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}