The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which federal prosecutors listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in a 2007 Hamas terror-financing case, has released its 2026-2027 nationwide back-to-school guide — a document CAIR itself describes as part of its "Unhostile Campus Campaign," which the guide's own introduction states is now being formally extended from college campuses down to K-12 schools while continuing to reach higher education communities.
The guide directs schools to a 9/11 curriculum that lists Osama bin Laden's "Letter to America" as a high school resource and does not describe the September 11 attackers terrorists. It points student activists to a document — published five days after the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre — that instructs organizers to use U.S. citizens as legal absorbers of arrest and consequences for non-citizen protesters.
The guide provides age-bracketed scripts for discussing Gaza with children as young as five. The scripts themselves do not mention Israel, Hamas, or the October 7 massacre. CAIR published the guide in August 2026 despite active congressional scrutiny, including a formal petition from Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) asking the Department of Education to investigate CAIR's K-12 partnerships. The document represents an institutional escalation: material previously distributed by state chapters is now being formally endorsed by CAIR National for a nationwide audience of students — children as young as five through university seniors.
The 9/11 Curriculum CAIR National Now Endorses
Under a section titled “Guidance on Challenging Topics: 25th Anniversary of 9/11 and Tools for Classrooms,” CAIR’s 2026-2027 guide formally recommends and hyperlinks a single classroom resource — a curriculum developed by CAIR-New Jersey and a group called Teaching While Muslim — instructing educators to “access the curriculum at cair-nj.org/911curriculum and share this resource with educators, administrators, and local school boards.”
The curriculum is titled “The Impact of 9/11 on Muslims.” It is designed for use in elementary, middle, and high school social studies and English classes.. And it describes the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks as “a group self-identifying as AlQaeda hailing from the mountains of Afghanistan.” The word “terrorist” is not used to describe them. The curriculum tells middle and high schoolers that the attackers “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” — repeating al-Qaeda’s own stated grievances as historical explanation, with U.S. support for Israel listed first.
The curriculum introduces Osama bin Laden to students as “a man named Osama bin Laden” — an anti-Soviet fighter the U.S. once supported. As a resource for high school classrooms, the curriculum recommends The Guardian’s full text of Bin Laden’s “Letter to America” — the manifesto in which bin Laden justified the September 11 attacks and called for the mass killing of Americans and Jews. The curriculum also recommends the film “V for Vendetta,” as a 9/11 backgorund resource, which depicts the bombing of government buildings as heroic resistance.
Jewish Onliner previously documented that CAIR chapters in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Florida, and Illinois have distributed similar 9/11 materials — including a CAIR-Philadelphia guide instructing teachers to avoid “inaccurate and inflammatory terms such as ‘Islamic terrorists,’ ‘jihadists,’ or ‘radical Islamic terrorists.’”
With the 2026-2027 guide, CAIR National has now formally endorsed and nationalized the CAIR-New Jersey 9/11 Teaching Resource Guide. The guide suggests the material it provides should be taught in Social Studies or English classes throughout the country.
A Post-October 7 Activism Playbook — For K-12 Students
Under the section “Guidance for Students Speaking Out Against Islamophobia and for Palestinian Rights,” the K-12 guide directs students to a CAIR document hosted on islamophobia.org — a CAIR project. That document was published on October 12, 2023 — five days after the Hamas-led massacre of roughly 1,200 people in Israel and before Israel’s ground response had meaningfully begun.
Under a heading titled “Organizing Responsibly,” the document instructs activists to “Recruit at least 10 U.S. citizens to your core team,” explaining that “citizens typically face fewer risks when protesting publicly. A larger citizen base adds legal resilience to your group.” It directs organizers to “let citizens take front-line roles in protests” — where they will “hold signs, lead chants, speak to the media, and take direct action, minimizing risk to non-citizen participants.” It then instructs organizers to “assign non-citizens to behind-the-scenes roles” like logistics and communications, “lowering their exposure to arrest or retaliation.”
The framework treats American citizens as legal absorbers of arrest and consequence, while structurally shielding non-citizen participants from law enforcement scrutiny. It was drafted in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 massacre. And it is now the document CAIR’s 2026-2027 K-12 guide directs American schoolchildren toward as authoritative activism guidance.
Coaching K-12 Students on Gaza and Loaded Terminology
Beyond the 9/11 curriculum, CAIR’s guide devotes sections to “Talking to Young Children About Gaza” and “Issues related to Muslims, Arabs, Jews, Palestinians, and others against genocide.” The guide encourages students to “explore key terms that may arise in lesson plans or that students may raise, such as ‘apartheid,’ ‘genocide,’ and ‘terrorism.’”
It provides age-bracketed scripts for adults discussing Gaza with children as young as five. It instructs educators to “ensure students are not penalized or stigmatized for expressing support for Palestinian human rights and do not conflate peaceful advocacy for Palestinian freedom with supporting terrorism or antisemitism.”
Timing, Scale, and Congressional Scrutiny
CAIR itself ties the guide’s release to the 25th anniversary of September 11 and to “the ongoing conflicts overseas.” Corey Saylor, CAIR National’s Research and Advocacy Director, said the campaign’s purpose is to make sure students, parents, and educators know “where a school’s authority ends.” The guide is being deployed nationwide alongside a webinar series aimed at both K-12 and higher education communities.
The release comes despite mounting federal scrutiny. In September 2025, Senator Cotton alerted Education Secretary Linda McMahon to CAIR’s efforts to influence K-12 schools, warning that “such an organization should never have access to our nation’s children.”
House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI) told Jewish Onliner in an exclusive statement that “credible reports that CAIR is partnering with K-12 schools to push a radical curriculum are deeply troubling given CAIR’s ties to terrorism and antisemitism.”