Ahmed Mohamed

 

Courtesy of The Dallas Morning News, David Woo

Ahmed Mohamed is a 14 year old ninth grade student attending MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas. Ahmed was a part of the robotics club in middle school and was in search of something similar in the first few weeks of high school. So in result, he made a clock in 20 minutes in hopes of a conversation starter to find a niche for him in a new school. Ahmed proceeds to show his engineering teacher his creation and got the unexpected response of "That's really nice, I advise you not to show any other teachers." Later in the day the clock's alarm beeped where Ahmed's English teacher complained and so Ahmed brings up his invention explaining it is a clock except his teacher does not believe him. Convinced it's a bomb the teacher took the clock, called the principal who proceeded to contact the police, who's initial reaction was "Yup. That's who I thought it was." and then promptly took Ahmed to a juvenile detention center where he was searched and fingerprinted until a while after where his parents had to pick him up.

    The story does not stop there MacArthur High School and Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd have both released statements concerning the event and let's just say they aren't the greatest responses in the world. My personal favorite section from MacArthur's statement is

"I recommend using this opportunity to talk with your child about the Student Code of Conduct and specifically not bringing items to school that are prohibited. Also this is good time to remind your child how important it is to immediately report any suspicious items and/or suspicious behavior they observe to any school employee so we can address it right away."

     This little snippet from the principal implies that Ahmed was at fault for bringing in the clock to school in the first place, even though everyone already knew it was a clock and Ahmed claimed it was just that. Essentially pushing this idea that Muslim kinds can't express their creativity and try to make it part of their school life. Along with the quote of the Police Chief explaining there was still not enough details proving that the device was a clock and that Ahmed was handcuffed for his own safety neither the school nor the police department want to admit that they were at fault and have yet apologized to Ahmed.

    Thankfully this story blew up and now almost everyone has heard of Ahmed's situation with outpouring support from people like President Obama to Mark Zuckerburg and with the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed trending all day, there seems to be an endless amount of support for Ahmed. All while there seems to be an endless amount of feeling of upset and anger towards the Police department and MacArthur High School. All day on every social media feed, I see celebrities, friends and strangers express their anger towards the obvious Islamophobia presented by the police and school.

Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great.

— President Obama (@POTUS) September 16, 2015

You’ve probably seen the story about Ahmed, the 14 year old student in Texas who built a clock and was arrested when he...
Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday, September 16, 2015

 

Courtesy of Prajwol/Ru @OfficialPrajwol

    They're not alone in this feeling, I too feel extremely upset and angry. It's upsetting especially since this hits so personally, I'm a dumb young college Muslim American and for this to happen in a country that is praised so highly of it's acceptance of different cultures and known as the melting pot it hurts me when I see this story because Ahmed could be any one of my friends. And for such a traumatic experience to happen at such a young age how else could you make the transition to high school even worse? By getting arrested because you wanted to try to find other nerds to build robots with while wearing your super cool NASA shirt? For all this to happen just because the color of your skin or your own name feels unfair. The real sucker punch for me is that this feeling of Islamophobia isn't new. For every event that showcases Islamphobia, it always seems to have a lasting effect with it about to happen again a few months later. Whether its potentially taking away Ahmed's love for inventing and building machines to something even more drastic like death such as the earlier events this year with the Chapel Hill shooting, or the death of Ahmed Al-Jumaili.

     This is where Ahmed's story really hits me, the whole reason this whole ruckus occurred was because his English teacher didn't trust him enough to believe that it was just a clock and by taking in factors of his skin and name, the drastic jump to the idea of it being a bomb was made. That drastic jump is fueled by the reasoning of Muslims being associated with violence, Islam as a religion of terror all because of very loud vocal minority events that are a true misrepresentation of the faith as a whole.
 
    It becomes even more difficult when all cable news networks primary position on Islam is assuming it as a faith of violence, inequality towards women and essentially anything else negative. Just one example of many is when Reza Aslan, a scholar of religions, went on CNN to comment on Bill Maher's comments on the faith and the exchange between the anchors and him seem unreal. Reza right away has to take the defensive position explaining to the CNN co-host that blaming female genital mutilation on Islam is a false fact since it predates both Islam and is done across multiple African countries with differing religions. He then tries to explain the whole issue with generalization Islam with these specific country examples by listing countries where females are treated equally even to the point where they have been elected as female officials but one of co-hosts goes to interrupts with the statement "Reza, be honest though. For the most part it is not a free and open society for women in those states," If a generalized bigoted statement was done with any other faith that anchor would have been fired immediately! But today it seems like it's the norm for Islam is negative and anything positive out of it is the exception. When in actuality it's the complete opposite! There are over 1.6 billion Muslims in the world and by taking a small group blanketing the rest is a misrepresentation of millions of people. And no matter how many news stories there are, or often it's said this feeling of Islam constantly being on the defense does not feel like it's going away anytime soon. Ahmed was put on the defense right from the beginning, he never claimed his invention was anything else but a clock, but because of his name and skin he had to defend himself, and as any other person describing the invention would with, the statement "it's a clock" wasn't good enough for the teacher or police due to their misconceptions and fear of Islam.

    I love religion, I love my culture, I love how it connects families and friends together creating a community and a sense of somewhere to belong all while promoting peace and love.


    That's the whole reason why I made a silly music video behind the largest Muslim holiday of the year, Eid-Al-Fitr. I wanted to show that hey Muslims are just like everyone else, we love our family, friends, food and having a good time with all of the above. Ahmed's story hurts a lot in a bunch of different ways. It makes me angry that he goes to describe the whole process of being arrested as not feeling human, it makes me disgusted that his teacher assumed negatively of something awesome he made at such a young age, and worse of all it makes me feel depressed that the final comment in the Dallas News piece he vows never to take an invention to school again.

 

    Ahmed Mohamed is the type of kid this country needs. A young minority teenager interested in engineering, a field having large diversity issues in a country that's falling behind in mathematics and science, along attempting to convince the rest of the Muslim world that America isn't anti-Islam with its policies all while having immigrant parents. Ahmed Mohamed is the perfect representation of the average Muslim just trying to do something he loves. Ahmed's father put it best when he says "He [Ahmed] just wants to make good things for mankind"

Courtesy of The Dallas Morning News, Bryant

Read Ahmed Mohamed's full story here: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/northwest-dallas-county/headlines/20150915-irving-ninth-grader-arrested-after-taking-homemade-clock-to-school.ece