14-Year-Old Arrested for Bringing Homemade Clock to School

[Beau]

This brings up a point that i have been meaning to bring up on the forum regarding facebook friends. It was mentioned to unfriend said person.

I didn't tell him to unfriend anyone. I said that's what I would do.

 

[Silveryblue]

I think the whole thing was a publicity stunt.
Surely this boys' parents are aware of the the climate of hysteria being whipped up around the world against Muslims? And yet they let him go to school with this "invention".
And the upshot? The boy now has invitations from Obama & Zuckerberg and is being compared to inventor Steve Jobs!!! What a world we live in.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

I think the whole thing was a publicity stunt.
Surely this boys' parents are aware of the the climate of hysteria being whipped up around the world against Muslims? And yet they let him go to school with this "invention".

There are a few assumptions in here. First, it isn't 'sure' that the boy's parents were totally aware of the climate of hysteria. Wishful thinking is in people's nature, and I think it's entirely possible that they had no idea such a thing would happen, for a number of reasons (e.g., "Our son is so talented and sweet, no one would think HE was a terrorist", "We haven't experienced it personally, so maybe it's not so bad", etc.). That's assuming they even knew all the details about the clock. I don't remember reading specific details about what they knew or didn't know (references would be handy).

And the upshot? The boy now has invitations from Obama & Zuckerberg and is being compared to inventor Steve Jobs!!! What a world we live in.

Again, this is ignoring the actual hell this kid had to go through. It doesn't make much sense to me to think this kid and/or his parents would purposefully send the kid to school with a 'hoax bomb' in order to get media attention. Sounds more like blaming the victim, to me.

 

[Aliana]

I think the whole thing was a publicity stunt.
Surely this boys' parents are aware of the the climate of hysteria being whipped up around the world against Muslims? And yet they let him go to school with this "invention".

There are a few assumptions in here. First, it isn't 'sure' that the boy's parents were totally aware of the climate of hysteria. Wishful thinking is in people's nature, and I think it's entirely possible that they had no idea such a thing would happen, for a number of reasons (e.g., "Our son is so talented and sweet, no one would think HE was a terrorist", "We haven't experienced it personally, so maybe it's not so bad", etc.). That's assuming they even knew all the details about the clock. I don't remember reading specific details about what they knew or didn't know (references would be handy).

And the upshot? The boy now has invitations from Obama & Zuckerberg and is being compared to inventor Steve Jobs!!! What a world we live in.

Again, this is ignoring the actual hell this kid had to go through. It doesn't make much sense to me to think this kid and/or his parents would purposefully send the kid to school with a 'hoax bomb' in order to get media attention. Sounds more like blaming the victim, to me.

I lived in Irving for years, and it is a very diverse community. There is a large community of people from India, Africa, Korea and many other countries. It is not unusual to see women in headscarves and no one ever appeared to pay any unusual attention. From what I experienced people were generally accepted, although that could have been because I did not hang out with people given to that kind of hatred. At any rate, I did not see much evidence of underlying anti-muslim hysteria, but obviously things could have changed over the last year. Anyway, unless the climate there has changed drastically, I don't see any reason why his parents would have felt the need to be concerned. And I certainly don't agree that they were hoping for media attention. I think that until something like this happens in the community, people for the most part don't really comprehend the prejudice. I am guessing that now they do, and these idiotic school administrators have helped to create a climate of fear and suspicion in the area. You have to wonder - are they that stupid, or is this just part of the deliberate ramping up of anti-muslim hatred by the PTB?

 

[angelburst29]

I think the whole thing was a publicity stunt.
Surely this boys' parents are aware of the the climate of hysteria being whipped up around the world against Muslims? And yet they let him go to school with this "invention".
And the upshot? The boy now has invitations from Obama & Zuckerberg and is being compared to inventor Steve Jobs!!! What a world we live in.

Silveryblue, if you look back at the contents in my prior Post, Ahmed Mohamed isn't being compared to Steve Jobs, a reference was given of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and a High School incident via Walter Isaacson’s - Steve Jobs biography.

As to "a publicity stunt" there may be a strong possibility "that the Son was targeted - to discredit the Father?" Ahmed's Father and Family migrated to the U.S., from Sudan in 1980 and went through the process to become American Citizen's. Mohamed Elhasan Mohamed is still active in his native Country of Sudan and ran on an election vote for Presidency in 2010 and 2015 but lost.

This article in the Daily Mail offers some background.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3238709/From-banks-Nile-meeting-Obama-father-Ahmed-Mohamed-Muslim-boy-14-handcuffed-homemade-clock-lived-American-dream.html

The Mohamed family hail from Alshatawy, a small village in Sudan's fertile White Nile region where their late father Elhassan made his living as a farmer.

Denied an education by his own father, Elhassan raised enough money to send four of his nine children, including Mohamed, to a prestigious school run on British lines, telling them: 'don't work the land, get an education'.

Mohamed excelled and went on to gain a philosophy degree from Cairo University in Khartoum.

He got his first proper job as a customs officer at the city's airport and within a few years was running his department.

In the late 1980s Mohamed emigrated to the US, following in the footsteps of his older brother Aldean, 59, who sold groceries, candy and papers from a small convenience store in New York.

His first job was selling hot dogs to tourists on street corners in Midtown Manhattan.

Mohamed soon swapped New York for Dallas, met his first wife, Shirley, and got a job as a delivery man for Domino's.

He decided he would run his own business, Elhassan Deliveries, and quickly secured a contract with convenience chain 7-Eleven. His next venture was a cab company called Jet Taxi.

It started out with a fleet of 25 vehicles and a handful of friends and relations filling in as drivers. The business had around 200 cars when he eventually decided to sell it off to Yellow Cab.

He divorced in 1996 and married his second wife Muna Ahmed Ibrahim, 45 (Ahmed's Mother).

Mohamed still runs a handful of businesses, including a solar energy company in his native Sudan, while mentoring local college kids and serving as president of the AlSufi Center in Irving.

Not afraid of making headlines himself, Mohamed was the Dallas Imam who challenged Koran-burning Christian pastor Terry Jones to a high-profile debate in 2011.

The two men faced one another at Jones' church in Gainesville, Florida, where the Muslim holy book was the focus of a mock trial with Mohamed making the case for the defense.

The kangaroo court ruled in favor of Jones and his defeated opponent was given just long enough to leave the building before Jones followed through with his threat.

Even so, Mohamed, whose religion centers on a moderate, mystical interpretation of Islam, refused to attack Jones, telling the Dallas Observer he 'admired' the firebrand Christian for giving him a forum.

His opponents also include Sudanese despot Omar al-Bashir, who seized control of his country in a military coup in 1989 and is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

Mohamed is vice president of the country's National Reform Party and stood for the presidency in 2010 and 2015.

'Right now the family are in shock but Mohamed will make a positive out of this,' said another of the boy's uncles, Abdel, a 55-year-old car dealer.

'He will make sure his son makes the best of these opportunities. Ahmed used to love taking our mobile phones apart then putting them back together.

'We were a little worried at first but then we realized he knows what he is doing. He has fixed the TV at home, he's fixed computers for people.

 

[NormaRegula]

Looks like the 'Ahmad Truthers' want to believe that the clock incident was contrived: http://qz.com/506760/ahmed-truthers-are-on-a-mission-to-prove-his-story-was-a-hoax-and-they-have-richard-dawkins-on-their-side/?utm_source=YPL

There are other stories that, while not saying it was a deliberate hoax, play up the fact that those who turned Ahmad in were not being hysterical…just cautious. I'm sure the PTB and their media minions decided the growing support behind Ahmed needs a little more perception management. Gotta remind the sheep that we live in a dangerous world and we need to be on the look-out at all times for suspicious activity.

 

[Pierre]

Arrgh. The kid probably can't point to any part inside his clock and tell you what it is for. No one asked him did they?
Instead they gave him a totally predictable response to a provocative demonstration.

How does taking the guts of a digital clock and attaching them to a case make any kind of "invention"?
It runs off mains power & even has a device for battery backup. Yay. Almost like a bought one. What forethought & cleverness for a 14 year old.
I would be more impressed if it had wires into a grapefruit.

Sure this is not an invention per se but it showed that Ahmed Mohamed has some creativity, curiosity and initiative. In his generation these are rare traits. The irony is that, if, like most teens, you spend endless hours playing mindless violent videogames the authority leave you alone but when you build, create you are in trouble.

Thus, beyond the obvious Muslim = terrorist hysteria, one can wonder what is the implicit message conveyed by this event to the teens like Ahmed Mohamed who try to create, build and discover. Maybe they'll think twice before conducting a new experiment or building a new gizmo. Maybe they'll switch to a safer activity, like playing videogames.