BUZZ
Had said teachers must ‘center the emotional needs of Muslim students’ in lessons about 9/11
The American University lecturer who declared in a September 11 twentieth-anniversary webinar it was a “false assumption of Muslim responsibility” is now worried about anti-Muslim discrimination in the U.S. during the current Iran conflict.
Amaarah DeCuir, who teaches “research methods courses […] rooted in antiracism” in American’s EdD program, writes in The Conversation that Muslim communities are bracing for blowback from the U.S.’s recent Middle East actions.
DeCuir says anti-Muslim/anti-Arab discrimination “was already on the rise” before the assault against Iran; as proof she links to a Rice University study claiming Muslims (and Jews) faced increased discrimination following the October 7, 2023 attack against Israel by Hamas terrorists.
That attack led to the deaths of over 1,000 Israelis, the equivalent of over 48,000 Americans.
The current conflict “would not be the first time” an increase in hostility towards Muslims in the U.S. has occurred, according to DeCuir. After 9/11, President George W. Bush’s “War on Terror” and creation of Dept. of Homeland Security led to the “disproportionate” monitoring of Muslims.
In addition, 30 percent of Americans said they “had heard negative comments about Arabs” less than a week after the twin towers fell.
DeCuir notes two months after 9/11, an “unprecedented” degree of “anti-Arab discriminatory incidents” took place, according to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Council.
My research shows that teachers create unsafe classrooms when they teach inaccurate narratives of international conflicts. Students can feel more isolated, and even targeted, if lessons replicate stereotypes. Teaching current events during times of war is difficult in K-12 classrooms. In many cases, teachers do not have up-to-date curriculum materials that they can use. But I still think it is necessary.
[…] I think classrooms can create safe and caring environments for students impacted by war. Muslim and Arab students with deep emotional and cultural ties to the Middle East could still experience trauma, even if they are not physically close to the war.
A 2025 Muslim community poll by the nonprofit research group Institute for Social Policy and Understanding found that educators and teachers are responsible for 1 of 3 reported incidents of anti-Muslim bullying, which could reflect their own biases.
In a 2021 “teacher training video” she produced, DeCuir claimed Muslim public school students “have experienced racism for generations, even ‘centuries.’”
She said “teachers should ‘center the emotional needs of Muslim students’ as they plan lessons and activities about 9/11,” and that educators “cannot be politically ‘naive’ and think there is ‘only one way that people understand” what transpired on that date.
According to a “spotlight” piece on American U. faculty, DeCuir said “I want our students to create rigorous, impactful, meaningful research that disrupts racism and oppression and advances equity and justice. To do this well, they need to practice working with academic theories.”
MORE: College deems students’ 9/11 ‘Never Forget’ posters bias incident for highlighting Islamic terrorism
