Why would anybody be alarmed?
By now we have all heard the story of 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed, the Muslim kid in Irving, Texas, who invented his own clock, took it to school and was briefly arrested when school officials were afraid it looked like a bomb. In the ensuing firestorm, President Obama invited him to bring his invention to the White House, CAIR jumped into the middle of it, lawsuits are pending, there are prayer vigils, and, and....
Wait a minute.
It is now being alleged that Mohamed's invention was nothing more than wires removed from an old digital clock and replaced into a pencil box. Furthermore, we are now learning more about Mohamed's father-not from the US media, mind you- rather from the Daily Mail in the UK and now Gallia Watch, a French blog. Seems he is quite the activist. Read on.
http://galliawatch.blogspot.com/2015/09/america-rallies-around-muslim-child.html
(You'll have to scroll down to the story.)
The last thing I want to do is jump on a 14-year-old boy, but if his parents put him up to this for purposes of publicity and lawfare, shame on them. If they wish to proceed with a lawsuit, they should be prepared for a full examination into whether this was some sort of contrived hoax. If it, in fact, was, whoever is responsible should be prosecuted.
As for the actions of the school and Irving police, their number one obligation is to the safety of everybody at that school. I don't know about you, but that contraption could easily be suspected of being a bomb. As to the fact that Ahmed was a Muslim, it is unfortunate if that increased the suspicion, but given the number of Islamic-inspired bombings going on daily around the world-not to mention the Boston Marathon bombing- such fears are well grounded.
3 comments:
What's strange is that the school didn't act like they should if they actually thought it was a bomb. Why didn't they call in a bomb squad?
Even if this was all a setup, the school still acted in a way that makes little sense.
@ Mo Hamed,
Good observation! If the school thought the clock was a bomb and communicated it to the local police, the local PD should have sent in a dog that can smell explosive bomb making material. If that is the case, then the bomb squad comes in. The school Administration reacted in a fashion that would protect the staff and the students. Although, if they looked inside the case, they would have seen an old 70s digital clock that was sold at a Radio Shack, as the printing on the circuit board suggested. So much for a ground to completed clock Mohamed. No science fair award for you. although you may get an award from the President who "sides with the Muslims.
Squid
Yeah yeah. Kids scavenge parts from whatever they can get their hands on, and try to put it back together. When I was his age, a friend and I went to the local phone company building (anyone remember when it was all Bell Telephone?) and asked for an old phone to take apart. They said they didn't do that, everything goes back to Western Electric to repurpose, but if we'd gotten one and taken it apart and gotten creative putting it back together it would have been about the same thing. Or when I brought an old telegraph key to school, hooked it up to a 9 volt battery and a push button, and got it to click. Ahmed didn't say "I invented the clock," he said, here's something I put together. Its one of America's great national past-times, and used to be what Radio Shack was for, when I was a kid. School administrators haven't changed much either -- they're still lead-footed paranoid dolts. Probably afraid of the mayor.
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