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September 17, 2015

Support Pours in for Muslim Student Arrested for Building a Clock 
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And in Texas, a Muslim high school student who was arrested after
bringing a homemade clock to school has received support from across the
country and announced plans to transfer schools. Fourteen-year-old Ahmed
Mohamed built a digital clock and brought it to Mac Arthur High School
in Irving, Texas, on Monday. After teachers said the device looked like
a bomb, police interrogated and arrested Mohamed and took him to a
juvenile detention center, where they took his fingerprints and a
mugshot. After Mohamed's story went viral amid protests over
Islamophobia, he received praise from Democratic presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and an invitation
to the White House from President Obama. Mohamed spoke at a news
conference Wednesday.

Ahmed Mohamed: "Assalamu alaikum. So I guess everyone knows I'm the
person who built a clock and got in a lot of trouble for it. I built the
clock to impress my teacher, but when I showed it to her, she thought it
was a threat to her. So, it was really sad that she took a wrong
impression of it, and I got arrested for it later that day. But since
the charges have already been dropped, I'm allowed to say that I really
want to go to MIT and TAMS (Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science),
and I'm thinking about transferring schools from Mac Arthur to any
different school."

The mayor of Ahmed Mohamed's city, Irving, Texas, has defended police
and school officials. Mayor Beth Van Duyne has been accused of fueling
Islamophobia in the past for championing a bill to counter the purported
threat of "sharia law" in Texas.

 

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