Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old freshman at a high school in Irving, Tex., was detained by the police after he took a homemade alarm clock to school to show an engineering teacher. Credit Vernon Bryant/The Dallas Morning News, via Associated Press
Source: Patheos
By Saima Sheikh
A 14 year old ninth grader was pulled from his class by police officers and school principal and interrogated for about 1 ½ hours. His crime: He brought a homemade digital clock to school to show his engineering teacher. He is a Muslim and his name is Ahmed Mohamed. This happened this past Monday at MacArthur High School in Irving, TX (suburb of Dallas). According to Ahmed’s initial interview with Dallas Morning News, the events during his interrogation were, “Ahmed never claimed his device was anything but a clock, said police spokesman James McLellan. And police have no reason to think it was dangerous. But officers still didn’t believe Ahmed was giving them the whole story. “We have no information that he claimed it was a bomb,” McLellan said. “He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation.” Asked what broader explanation the boy could have given, the spokesman explained: “It could reasonably be mistaken as a device if left in a bathroom or under a car. The concern was, what was this thing built for? Do we take him into custody?” Police led Ahmed out of MacArthur about 3 p.m., his hands cuffed behind him and an officer on each arm.”
Irving ISD issued the following statement, “Our top priority is the safety of every child on every campus, every day. When the homemade electronic device pictured here was discovered at MacArthur High School on Monday, school employees took precautions to alert police authorities. Students and staff should always immediately report if they observe any items or behavior that could indicate a potential threat to safety.” The school suspended Ahmed for three days even though this clock did not pose any threat. They haven’t recanted that statement. If you read their entire statement carefully, you will notice that they say, the device was “discovered”. Really! Ahmed said he showed to his engineering teacher who told him to put it back in his backpack and not to show it to anyone else. If Ahmed’s intentions were malicious, he would’ve hid it somewhere to scare people. Instead, he showed to his English teacher and explained to her that it was a homemade digital clock. That teacher in turn went to the principal’s office and they called the police.
He wasn’t even allowed to call his father! The police kept asking him questions and he kept replying that he only built the clock to show his engineering teacher. The police officer said that they didn’t understand his intention and decided to handcuff him and charge him for bringing a hoax bomb to school. What is there to understand? The child built a digital clock and brought it to school. If the police and the principal thought that this device was a bomb, then they should have issued an emergency, evacuated the school and called the bomb squad. None of this happened. Which proves that the statements issued by Irving ISD and the police department don’t have any merit.
The only explanation that comes to my mind is that Ahmed was arrested for being a Muslim who dared to excel in science. This clearly proves that Islamophobia has crept into American school system where the teachers and school administrators are quick to make hasty decisions and are unable to differentiate between a clock and a bomb. Their mindset is that just because he is a Muslim, he can’t possibly be smart or bring a harmless device to school. He is a terrorist and his intention is to harm us!
This situation has really saddened and scared me as a mother of a Muslim high school student. Should I discourage my son who loves math and science to not take his science experiments to school?
Follow Saima on twitter at @SaimaGSheikh
Categories: Americas, Islamophobia
This article is a joek. It doesn’t matter if he is muslim or christian or atheist. Terrorist attacks are a big problem in XXI century so they had to be really careful. He couldn’t call his father because the rights don’t let one do so.
This article is a joek. It doesn’t matter if he is muslim or christian or atheist. Terrorist attacks are a big problem in XXI century so they had to be really careful. He couldn’t call his father because the rights don’t let one do so. And after all he got out anyway so what’s the problem?
Facebook Zuckerman also “fell” for this; would you want to abuse him also in addition to President Obama?
NY Times
DALLAS — Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old high school student who was detained and handcuffed for bringing to school a homemade clock that was thought to be a fake bomb, was “overwhelmed” and is now “a little fatigued” from an eventful week, his father said on Friday.
Standing just outside his front door, the father, Mohamed El Hassan, reiterated Friday that his son would not return to MacArthur High School in Irving, Tex. He said that Ahmed had several offers from other schools, including private schools, but that it was not yet decided where he would go.
“He’s not going to go back to MacArthur,” he said. “That’s for sure.”
When asked if the family would take any action against the school, Mr. El Hassan said, “ I can’t answer that.”
An spokeswoman for the school district, Lesley Weaver, said in an interview on Friday that Ahmed was still officially enrolled at MacArthur.
The treatment of Ahmed produced a social media whirlwind and attention that reflected national debates about Islam, immigration and ethnicity. Ahmed was soon invited to the White House for an astronomy event on Oct. 19, and he received other invitations and messages of support for his love of inventing and building.
He was detained and photographed while wearing a NASA T-shirt; Mr. El Hassan said he did not know if Ahmed would wear it to the White House.
On Friday, the police chief in Irving, Larry Boyd, defended the officers who detained Ahmed.
He said in an interview on CNN that officers assigned to MacArthur High School had determined “fairly quickly” that the device was not a bomb. Then the issue, he said, was to determine why Ahmed had brought the device to school.
“What they were investigating was whether he brought a device to school with the intention of creating alarm,” Chief Boyd said.
Ahmed, who has professed a love of tinkering, said he had built a digital clock at home and then taken it to school on Monday to show his engineering teacher, who expressed appreciation but advised him not to show it to other teachers.
But the device made a sound in an English class, prompting Ahmed to show that teacher the source of the noise. The teacher commented that it looked like a bomb. The officers assigned to the school were called, and Ahmed was handcuffed, questioned by the police and eventually released to his parents.
Chief Boyd said the officers had not initially been told that Ahmed had brought the clock to school to show to a teacher. In the end, Chief Boyd said, the officers made the best possible decisions based on the information that they had.
The school suspended Ahmed for three days. The Irving Police Department has said that the case is closed and that no charges will be filed.
The episode brought criticism of the police’s actions, along with concerns about why Ahmed had been questioned without a parent present.
Muslim groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, have said the case is an example of the hatred and discrimination that Muslims face in the United States.
Chief Boyd said the department would review its procedures.
“One thing is clear to me,” he said. “Regardless of what we did, no matter what decision was made, there would’ve been people who agreed with it and people who disagreed with it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/19/us/irving-police-chief-defends-response-to-ahmed-mohameds-clock.html?_r=0
Zia, when you ask me a question, fairness demands that my answer be posted, no matter what your opinion is. I should either be credited or discredited for what I say. There should be no gagging.
Is it abusing Obama to say that he is completely in disarray if he goes off the teleprompter? In a press conference Obama promised to speed up the training of ISIS. In an attempt at damage control, the White House released an explanation by repeating the statement but with ‘Iraq’ in bracket after ISIS.
Why would any sane president talk about expediting the training of ISIS when it has been condemned as the one of the greatest evils under the sun presently? Any wonder that ISIS has gained strength from a rat-tag group to a formidable force?
You are familiar with the term ‘dhimmitude’ which has been polished as political correctness. That is where to place ‘Facebook Zuckerman’. He, MIT and other dhimmis are yet to respond to the fact that Ahmed lied about the contraption he took to school. Ignorance is a serious disease.