Erasing the Terrorists From 9/11

Twenty-five years after 19 Muslim terrorists seized four airliners, slammed two into the World Trade Center towers, one into the Pentagon and one into a Pennsylvania field, murdering 2,977 people, a Virginia school district is telling teachers: Do not connect 9/11 to Islam. In a six-page guide sent to Fairfax County teachers—just miles from that Pentagon crash site—“military families” appears three times and “first responders” once. References to Islam, Muslim students, Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism appear about 30 times.

You read that right: The school district closest to one of the crash sites has made shielding students from “anti-Muslim racism” a higher classroom priority than naming who carried out the terrorist attack or even focusing on the American victims, first responders, troops and their families.

Even though the hijackers included recitation of the Koran in their terrorist operation, this guide literally instructs teachers not to “associate the 9/11 attacks with Islam or Muslims.” It further tells teachers not to “center the extremists or the acts of the extremists,” and even orders them to “disrupt” students who talk about Muslim terrorists in classroom discussions.

Discussing 9/11 without discussing Muslim jihadism makes about as much sense as discussing World War ii without discussing National Socialism. Yet this is the approach Fairfax County teachers are being forced to take.

This is not affecting just one radical or intimidated school board: It is part of a larger trend.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. circulated an internal memo before the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, instructing journalists not to call 9/11 “terrorist attacks.” cbc’s senior director of journalistic standards, Basem Boshra, told staff to describe the day as “hijackings” that “led to passenger jet crashes.” Only after members of Congress, the fbi director and Canadian political leaders condemned the memo did the cbc rescind the rule.

That’s right: It took an international backlash to get these news executives to admit that Koran-reciting Muslim members of al Qaeda stabbing people to death, hijacking jetliners, crashing them into occupied buildings, murdering thousands of people, and terrorizing hundreds of millions of Americans is Islamic terrorism.

The British Broadcasting Corp. also told its reporters that the word terrorist can be “a barrier rather than an aid to understanding.” Four American journalism associations put out guidance around the 20th anniversary to say that the word terrorism should generally appear in quotation marks because it is “emotionally and politically loaded.”

Even liberal comedian Bill Maher tore into his fellow Democrats for this approach, saying, “Now a lot of media outlets don’t even want you to say the T-word.” Concerning the bbc’s guidelines, he said, “You know what’s really a barrier to understanding? Lying.”

None of this is about protecting Muslim schoolchildren from bullying. This is about educators, editors and executives who have decided the truth is too uncomfortable to say out loud.

The Prophet Isaiah says our people are sick in their reasoning and are faint of heart (Isaiah 1:5). When they see something fearsome, they are afraid to face it! So they bury their heads in the sand and ignore the fact that Islamic extremists carried out the 9/11 attacks and nearly 50,000 other terror attacks since then.

The results of this political deception are evident. A Daily Mail/JL Partners opinion poll from 2023 indicates 1 in 5 young Americans now view Osama bin Laden positively.

The danger is not that Americans are becoming Islamophobic. The danger is that Americans are starting to sympathize with the terrorists. It is time for the American people to wake up! The Prophet Hosea says that we allow ourselves “to be mixed up with foreigners …. Foreigners eat away his strength unknown to him” (Hosea 7:8-9; Moffatt translation).

Americans are instructing their teachers to censor the words Islam and terror when acknowledging the 25th anniversary of 9/11. They are silencing schoolchildren who state or ask about the most obvious and relevant facts regarding the worst Islamic terrorist atrocity in our history. They are even electing radical Muslims like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib to public office—and they just elected Muslim socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City.

This “enlightened,” self-destroying propaganda is neither intelligent nor moral.

Scripture explains what we are watching. The war over words is a war over truth. The Bible says “that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan” has deceived “the whole world,” and that “the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not” (Revelation 12:9; 2 Corinthians 4:4). Jesus Christ described the devil this way: “He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:44).

Today, many anchors, educators and politicians are lying about what motivated 19 Muslims to carry out the deadliest terrorist attacks in American history. A nation that will not name its enemies will not defeat them—and the devil does not want America to survive.