Obama and the Clock Boy

  

                         By Florida Bill 

                            Things just keep getting more and more tense--and ridiculous.  Now we have a 14-year-old Texas boy threatening to sue if he is not awarded $15 million dollars as a result of alleged discrimination against him at his high school because of his race and Muslim religion. 

                                 And there on the sidelines, contributing to the boy's celebrated status, and wounded psyche, is President Obama who continues to show that he is anything but a unifier in this country which is being torn apart by religious and racial strife. If you would look to the President for healing words, look elsewhere.  He never saw a race or religious problem involving Muslims where he did not rev up the discrimination.  Always critical of police, count on him to make matters a little bit worse.                     

                                 The "clock-boy" teenager is Ahmed Mohamed, a freshman in the MacArthur school in Irving, Texas.  The controversial episode began on a September morn when Ahmed came to school carrying a weird looking homemade clock tucked into a pencil box with wires exposed. Two faculty members jumped when they saw the contraption which looked to them an awful lot like a bomb. Ahmed said it was a clock which he had made at home, but the teachers had their doubts.  Ahmed had brought other gizmos to school in the past, and had acquired a reputation as the "kid who  makes crazy contraptions."  

                                 Preferring to be safe rather than sorry, faculty members initiated sort of a code red alert, summoning security and police. The boy was taken into custody and his creation was isolated and examined. Police thought it looked like a bomb too, but further scrutiny showed that it was not.
                             Ahmed was taken away in handcuffs because of a suspected "hoax bomb" violation, a crime under the criminal statutes in Texas which forbids producing a gizmo which looks like a bomb but isn't, but can cause fear and commotion.   He was suspended for three days, but that hoax bomb investigation led nowhere, and Ahmed was absolved of wrongdoing and issued an apology.                            

                               The school did what it had to do, school officials said.  Faculty members suspected that the clock was a ticking bomb and they acted out of concerns for safety.  To have ignored the warning signs and simply hoped that it was a clock and not a bomb was not an option in these days of heightened security and caution at schools.   Safety is our prime concern and "we are never going to take chances..." said Lesley Weaver, a school spokeswomen.   "Think of it," said  Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne, in an interview with Glenn Beck. "If your child was in that school and you saw something like that gadget come in, you would want to make sure it is our priority to make our children safe in school, period."                      

                                Stories of the clock boy moved throughout the country with the media stoking the flames of prejudice by emphasizing the family's allegations that the boy had been targeted for punishment because he was a Muslim.  Liberal organizations and electronic journalists piled on asserting that Islamophobia was the force at work. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said that the incident stemmed from apparent discrimination against Muslims.  

                              Ahmed's celebrity took off and he was hailed as some sort of a scientific genius and inventor. There were thousands of tweets.  Ahmed met with New York Mayor DeBlasio and members of the city council, and with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu who was in New York. According to Ahmed's father, the teenager was invited to meet with officials of the United Nations in New York. He also was a guest on Good Morning America and he chatted with Dr. Oz on his TV  health show.  

                            The ice cream on Ahmed's cake was his meeting with President Obama who gave him a hug and complimented him for his scientific prowess.  He brought Ahmed and his father to the White House and at an assembly on the south law, attended by scientists and astronauts, extolled the boy for his scientific endeavors and observed that "we should not suppress them, not squelch them." His comment highlighted his customary stance against the police and other authorities in racial and religious controversies. 

                           Even as Ahmed's celebrity grew, the clock creation was pooh poohed by some policemen and engineers who examined the device as being far from the creative  work of a young genius. According to one critic, who labeled the boy a "fraud,"  the gimmick was simply the guts of an old digital clock removed and crammed into a pencil case with a mess of wires protruding. Basically, he never built anything, it was charged.  Nevertheless, his receipt of kudos continued and his father, Mohamed Ellhassen Mohamed announced that the family would be moving to Qatar in the Middle East and that his son had been awarded a scholarship by the Qatar Foundation for Education which would encourage and further his inventiveness and pursuit of science. 

                          Along with announcing that his family was moving to Qatar, the senior Mohamed announced the demand for $10 million from the city of Irving and $5 million from the school district as compensation for the "severe psychological trauma" inflicted upon his son as a result of the outrageous discrimination against him as a Muslim of Sudanese origin.   A civil suit for damages will be pursued if the demand is ignored, the  senior Mohamed said.   

                             School officials have said that there is another side of this incident; a side which suggests that Ahmed knew that his contraption was suspicious looking and knew that some might think of it as a bomb, which qualifies as a violation of the hoax bomb law.
                              So is the school a notorious discriminator against Muslims?  There is no question  that the contraption which Clock-Boy brought to school looked like a bomb. Police, as well as faculty members said so. In  this day and age of school violence and shootings, safety, and not Ahmed's feelings, were of foremost concern, and the response by the teachers was completely reasonable and appropriate.
                            Consider also: the 2015 MacArthur valedictorian, Amena Jamali, is a Muslim, and reportedly sent an email to the school principal in an effort to correct news stories which denigrated the school for its bigoted policies.  In the correspondence, she praised the school for "accommodating Muslim needs," adding that the school was a place which changed her life, and where she felt "respected as a Muslim."            
                            The senior Muhamed has given the school and the city of Irving 60 days to pay up.  The appropriate answer to to him:  "See ya in Court."