The Sheer Lunacy of Cuffing a Kid Over a Homemade Clock

Belinda Luscombe – Time

School officials say they thought Ahmed might have made a hoax bomb to freak people out and generally cause mischief, and that’s why they suspended him. Even if that’s true, it’s unlikely he would have been treated the same way if his name were Arnold instead of Ahmed. And if it were true, the first port of call should have been his parents and not the police. Then Ahmed’s safety would have been assured, as well as that of everybody else.

The teenager’s treatment struck a chord on the internet, where the #IStandWithAhmed hashtag trended widely…  and President Obama, whose invitation to bring a clock to the White House might have brightened the 14-year-old’s day:

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

#IStandWithAhmed Campaign Grows on Social In Response to False Arrest of Texas Teenager http://t.co/EcLW4v0SMH pic.twitter.com/kUUV0BZNEX

— Social Media Today (@socialmedia2day) September 18, 2015

Among the many regrettable things about the way this was handled, one of the saddest is that the story’s wide dispersal will further erode the trust between schools and parents…. Throw in a few school shootings and some xenophobic fear-mongering and Ahmed ends up in cuffs.

A homemade clock made by Ahmed Mohamed, 14, is seen in an undated picture released by the Irving Texas Police Department on Sept. 16, 2015. (Reuters)

Ahmed’s Clock in the Age of Grievance-Mongering

Kevin D. Williamson – National Review 

Mohamed’s father says that his son was mistreated because the incident happened a few days after the annual commemoration of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, and because his name is Mohamed. The story immediately became ubiquitous not because of what actually happened — boneheaded as that was — but because it can be used to further a story that the media already want to tell: that the United States is morally corrupt and irredeemably racist; that Muslims are under siege; that “white privilege” blinds the majority of Americans to the corruption at the heart of everything red, white, and blue….

President Barack Obama, never one to miss an opportunity for cheap moral preening, invited Mohamed to the White House…. This is an age of overreaction. It is, unhappily, also an age of race-hustling and grievance-mongering….

Ahmed Mohamed was mistreated by imbeciles, and he’ll be famous for it… The fact is that he is not worse off because his name is Mohamed, but better off: Nobody would be paying attention otherwise, and he might very well be in jail. Being mistreated by imbeciles is the sine qua non of American public education today, but that fact is of political use only periodically, as in this case.

Aisha U-kiu, president of American Muslim Professionals of Dallas, speaks at a prayer vigil in support of Ahmed Mohamed on Sept. 17, 2015 in Irving, Texas.

The Ahmed Mohamed Fiasco: When Racial Stereotyping Meets Scientific Illiteracy

 Ryan Cooper – The Week

Set aside the gutter racism of both the police and the school administration, and focus on the logic of the situation. At that point, either the device was a bomb or it wasn’t. If the authorities thought there was even the tiniest chance that it was an actual bomb — and it seems pretty clear that this bunch were a few semesters shy of an explosives degree — then what on Earth were they doing wasting time arguing with the kid?

They should have called an expert, or even emptied out the school and called in the bomb squad. First figure out whether there is a real danger, then either take the kid into custody, or apologize profusely for a mistaken accusation.

It’s a stark example of the fundamental uselessness of racial profiling as a strategy of fighting crime or terrorism…. In a letter defending himself, the school principal goes on and on about safety, security, necessary precautions, and so forth.

But by his own assumptions, he put the entire school in danger! It turns out that being racist is not actually a serviceable replacement for competence, technical knowledge, or simple common sense.