A Virginia school district just miles from the Pentagon distributed a 9/11 teaching guide that devotes half its content to protecting Muslim students' feelings, and only 15 percent to what actually happened that day.
Fairfax County Public Schools sent teachers a six-page instructional guide titled "25th Anniversary and Commemoration of 9/11" ahead of the attacks' quarter-century mark. The 1,740-word document tells educators not to "associate the 9/11 attacks with Islam or Muslims," not to "center the extremists or the acts of the extremists," and not to turn a commemorative lesson into "an examination of Islam." Doing so, the guide warns, could send the "harmful message" that "Islam, or all Muslims, are responsible for these terrorist attacks."
Retired Navy Vice Admiral Lou Crenshaw, who was inside the Pentagon when a hijacked jet slammed into the building on September 11, 2001, told Fox News Digital the guide amounts to historical evasion dressed up as sensitivity.
"It's sort of a vanilla way to do things. Everybody can go through the deal and feel good about it. And at the end of the day, nobody complains."
Crenshaw did not stop there.
"To me, that's not exactly what we need to do. We need to make sure that the kids have learned a lesson here. And that's not going to happen if we try to shave the facts to the point where it's hard to figure out what we're talking about."
A digital content analysis of the document found that roughly half of the guide's 1,740 words focus on tips for creating "safe spaces for Muslim and Middle Eastern students." The guide contains 30 references to Islam, "Muslim families," "Muslim students," "anti-Muslim racism," "anti-Middle Eastern" rhetoric, "Islamophobic rhetoric," and "Middle Eastern students" and families.
By contrast, the guide mentions military families three times. It mentions first responders once.
Only about 15 percent of the document spells out specific instruction on the 9/11 attacks themselves. The rest addresses managing students' "emotional responses." The guide does describe 9/11 as "a coordinated terrorist attack on the United States," but its "Do's and Don'ts" list steers teachers away from naming the ideology behind the coordination. Teachers are told that Muslim students experience "the worst anti-Muslim racism" during September 11 lessons, and that speaking out against anti-Muslim bias is part of their "sacred role as teachers."
If educators hear "Islamophobic rhetoric," the guide instructs, "it is up to you to disrupt."
The school district sits only a few miles from the Pentagon and serves many military-connected families. In a statement, FCPS said it remembers "the nearly 3,000 people who were killed, including 184 at the Pentagon," and honors "the first responders whose courage and sacrifice continue to inspire us." The district added that it "remains committed to creating an inclusive environment in our schools where all students feel welcome and respected."
That commitment to inclusivity, though, produced a guide that mentions the people who died far less often than it mentions the faith of the men who killed them, while simultaneously telling teachers not to connect the two.
Crenshaw served in the Navy from 1974 to 2007. On the morning of September 11, 2001, he was stationed on the Pentagon's E Ring, fourth floor, the same side of the building the hijacked jet would strike. He watched television footage of planes hitting the World Trade Center in New York and recalled thinking, "This is not a good thing."
He continued to a scheduled appointment elsewhere in the building. Then the Pentagon itself was hit.
"Just about the time they sat down, and we started the interview, there was tremendous noise. Bang! The entire building shook, and we knew right away that something bad had happened."
Crenshaw saw smoke billowing from the impact area and watched a chief petty officer crying as windows shattered. His own work area did not immediately collapse but was later destroyed by fire. Nineteen hijackers carried out the coordinated assault that day, directed by al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden. Bin Laden associate Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who took credit for planning the attack, still awaits trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Crenshaw drew a distinction that the Fairfax County guide avoids. Al Qaeda used "an extremist interpretation of Islam to justify the attack, portraying it as retaliation for the presence of U.S. forces overseas and American foreign policy," he said. But he was clear-eyed about what that means for honest teaching.
"What we saw in 9/11 was a religious extremist group, al Qaeda, who did not tolerate what the United States was doing around the world and decided to react violently."
He added that al Qaeda members "are a branch of Islam, but they certainly do not espouse any of the values that we know of Islam worldwide. And, therefore, they really shouldn't be considered to be part of that mainstream religion." That framing manages to name the threat honestly without smearing an entire faith, exactly the balance the FCPS guide claims to want but never achieves, because it forbids naming the threat at all.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch delivered a pointed speech calling for exactly the kind of directness the Fairfax County guide discourages.
"The men who attacked this city were terrorists. The men and women who ran into the towers to save innocent lives were heroes. Twenty-five years cannot be allowed to blur that distinction, and shame on those who do."
Tisch's rebuke landed against a backdrop of institutional retreat. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation recently reversed earlier guidance that had instructed its journalists to avoid calling 9/11 a "terrorist attack." CBC changed course only after a major public backlash. The pattern is consistent: institutions soften the language around 9/11, face public outrage, and sometimes, but not always, reverse course.
Fairfax County's guide fits neatly into that pattern. And this is not the first time the district has drawn scrutiny over how it handles 9/11 in the classroom. The Washington Examiner previously reported that a Fairfax County School Board member pushed to remove the phrase "Islamic terrorism" from 9/11 history lessons entirely, a move that suggests the current guide is not an isolated misjudgment but part of a longer institutional drift.
That drift has a face. Board member Abrar Omeish drew national attention for describing the Battle of Iwo Jima, where nearly 7,000 American service members died, as "unfortunate" and an example of "human evil." She previously told minority students at a graduation ceremony to remember their "jihad" while describing America as overcome by "racism, white supremacy, and capitalism." The New York Post reported that Omeish's father was a leader at the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, a mosque attended by two of the 9/11 hijackers and by radical imam Anwar Al-Awlaki.
When a school board with that track record produces a 9/11 teaching guide that mentions Islam 30 times but first responders once, the priorities are not hard to read.
The guide's stated goal, protecting Muslim students from bigotry, is reasonable in the abstract. No student should be blamed for the acts of terrorists who shared their faith. Crenshaw himself made that point plainly: al Qaeda does not represent mainstream Islam.
But the guide does not draw that distinction. It erases the distinction by erasing the facts that make it necessary. If teachers cannot name radical Islamic terrorism as the motive behind 9/11, they cannot explain why mainstream Islam is different from it. The result is not sensitivity. It is ignorance, the kind that leaves students unable to understand either the attack or the faith the attackers distorted.
The controversy mirrors a broader pattern in which political figures face backlash over 9/11-related statements that critics view as evasive or disrespectful to the victims. The question is always the same: whose comfort matters more, the people asked to remember, or the institutions asked to teach?
FCPS acknowledged in its own statement that the school community has a "deeply personal connection to September 11 because of our proximity to the Pentagon and the many military-connected families we serve." A guide that mentions those military families three times in 1,740 words does not honor that connection. It manages it.
Meanwhile, efforts to weaken national security tools born from the post-9/11 era continue in Congress, and officials across the country still struggle with the basic question of whether to show up and honor the dead without qualification.
Lou Crenshaw felt the Pentagon shake. He watched smoke pour from the place where his colleagues worked. He does not need a six-page guide to tell him what happened or why. Neither do the students of Fairfax County, if anyone will let them learn it.
A country that cannot teach its children who attacked it and why will not stay safe for long. Sensitivity is no substitute for the truth, and the truth is not a slur.