Ahmed Mohamed, 14, had thought that he had achieved something that would garner praise at at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas. He had made a homemade digital clock from a pencil case. Instead, teachers called police and Ahmed was interrogated and taken to the police station on suspicion of a bomb hoax. UPDATE: some critics have expressed doubt over the clock as well as the narrative.
The teen, who wants to go to MIT, was a robotics club member and won awards for his inventions. He said that he actually showed it to one teacher who said it was impressive but recommended that he not show it to people at the school. Then it beeped in class and he showed the source of the noise.
Ahmed’s English teacher thought the clock was a bomb and that triggered a bizarre response of multiple teachers and police who took Ahmed into custody without any evidence supporting the allegation of a bomb. He said that was pulled out of class and taken to a room with four police officers. He said that one immediately said “Yup. That’s who I thought it was.” Another said to him, “So you tried to make a bomb?” He said that he kept saying it was a clock.
Irving Police spokesman Officer James McLellan insisted “We attempted to question the juvenile about what it was and he would simply only tell us that it was a clock.”
Well, that was probably because it was a clock Officer McLellan.
Chief Larry Boyd added that Ahmed should have been “forthcoming” by going beyond the description that what he made was a clock. Like what? I can only think of two relevant points. One it is a clock. Two it is not a bomb.
What he did allegedly say is that he wanted to speak with his parents, but that was allegedly one thing that the police did not want to hear. He was held without a lawyer or speaking with his parents according to reports.
Ahmed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, reportedly came to his country after fighting for greater freedoms in Sudan where he twice ran for the presidency. He would find his son “surrounded by five police and . . . handcuffed.” He also learned that the police had denied him the right to call his parents by saying that they had not technically put him under arrest.
His family have questioned whether he would have been treated the same way if his name were not Mohamed and was Muslim.
Thousands have rallied around Ahmed under the hashtag “#IstandwithAhmed.” They include Nasa scientists who noticed he was wearing a NASA teeshirt as well as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Even President Barack Obama, tweeted to Ahmed: “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.”
It was not a clock, in the sense that it would tell you the time, it was a count down clock intended to count backwards down to zero (like the timer on a bomb). The kid did not actually ‘build’ it from scratch. It was a commercial count down clock which he disassembled and installed in a pencil case, with the countdown part showing it counting down to zero and the other components inside the box in a way that closely resembled a suitcase bomb. This was not an innocent, unintended, misunderstanding.
” it was a count down clock intended to count backwards down to zero (like the timer on a bomb).”
What is the evidence that circuit board in the picture counts down. Where is that report coming from. It sounds like a lurid detail to frighten people who believe anything they read on the internet.
Until we have further evidence, I put this claim right up there with the claims we have read that the board was ticking. In case any readers do not know, circuit boards don’t tick – not unless they have extra parts or programming (contained in a static memory device such as a programmable read only memory device – prom) to make them tick. If someone one had claimed the board was beeping I might give them a millisecond of credibility. But ticking – nope, doesn’t make any sense, just a lurid detail to frighten those who believe anything they read on the internet.
BTW, there is convincing discussion on other blogs pointing out numbers and markings on the circuit board in the photo that demonstrate that circuit board was re-purposed from a Radio Shack alarm clock likely manufactured in the 1980’s. The time period of manufacture can be bracketed due to changes in technology used to manufacture the board. The traces in the photo appear hand drawn – in those days simple circuits were hand drawn, photographed, the boards coated with photo-resist and etched with acid to create the traces. This is not proof beyond any possible doubt. But for anyone who has some familiarity with circuit boards or has tried to trace information about old electronic devices marking on the boards, this is strong (but not irrefutable) evidence.
Readers can verify for themselves, the board in the photo has a common AC electric cord, transformer, and connector for a 9v battery. That suggest the board is nothing more than a circuit board from a commercial alarm clock with battery back up.
There is nothing we can see on the board or in the photo to suggest this device is anything other than a clock or alarm clock.
DBQ:
“The correct thing to do would be to take the device, isolate it and have it checked out by a bomb expert. Then apologize and give it back to the kid with compliments on his ingenuity. Also advise him the next time he has an invention to show off, get some clearance ahead of time so there are no surprises.
This is a very clever, intelligent young man and I hope he isn’t turned off in his endeavors by this treatment.”
I completely agree. This kid could have the potential to go far in science or engineering. I hope he is able to catalog this incident as something to laugh about later.
Boy, am I glad I decided NOT to tee-pee that plutonium complex like my physicist friends suggested. They would probably have over-reacted, too.
Why do people assume that the school would not freak out if a white, Latino, or African American kid brought a ticking box of wires into school?
The reason why many people worry about Muslim terrorists is because terrorism is effective.
When Muslim terrorists keep blowing people up, running cars into bus stops, beheading people, and crashing planes into buildings, then people get a little worried when a Muslim starts messing with his shoes on a plane, or doing anything else that reminds them of all the news stories they’ve read.
I remember after 9/11 my Muslim friends would just roll their eyes about the ordeal of having to take a plane trip when everyone around them wondered if they were terrorists. People were just scared, and for good reason, since entire countries start their day chanting “Death to America!” No, really, they start elementary school classes with “Death to Israel! Death to America!”
Poor kid.
On the one hand, if a teacher really thought it was a bomb, then of course they needed to call 911 and get it checked out. That’s not in question. If you bring a ticking box full of wires into a school or airport, you’re going to freak people out. This kid was too young to know that.
It’s what happened after they ascertained it was not a bomb that I have a problem with. I assume the bomb squad could tell pretty quickly that this was not a bomb. There was nothing to explode – no plastique, no wireless trigger to explode remote ordinance. It was literally just a clock.
At that point, they should have congratulated him on his ingenuity, and explained why it was not appropriate to bring to school unless he had prior approval. They should never, ever, have kept his parents from him, and their line of reasoning that he should have been more forthcoming besides that it was a clock can be dismissed as absurd.
I also believe that his robotics teacher should have been allowed to clear this up. He could have been able to explain to everyone that it is, indeed, just a clock.
“Paul C. Schulte
1, September 19, 2015 at 1:27 pm
Inga – the SPLC is a terrorist organization and has been taken off the approved list of literature for the US Armed Forces. I would have a tendency to take everything they saw with a grain of salt.”
Back it up, Paul.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/dod-continue-using-liberal-southern-poverty-law-center-training-resource
BamBam, if someone can provide missing details it would be great…. anyone BUT those two. Of course people are free to choose who or what to believe. As for me, I don’t trust anything they have to say to be free of anti Islam sentiment.
Annie
You still didn’t provide any facts, with regard to this specific story in Texas, which contradict anything that either person mentioned as having occurred with this kid and his so-called clock. Details, which are woefully missing about what actually transpired, mean something and shouldn’t be dismissed outright because of a personal animus that you have. Are you willing to disregard facts–not opinions–just because you don’t admire the source of those facts? Fine. Provide the truth, which contradicts these people.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/gellerhypocrite/
“O’Reilly was chatting with Laura Ingraham, the sharp-tongued doyenne of right-wing talk radio. Ingraham is the pillar of truth or a priestess of hate, depending on the eye of the beholder, but numbers don’t lie—she has successfully made a name for herself in a male-dominated field in which hosts generally hew to the hard-line orthodoxy on immigration, terrorism, and religion.
Such violence could have been expected, which was almost certainly the point. Geller and her associates “have the right to go there, but again, it’s stupid, it accomplishes nothing,” said Bill O’Reilly, whose brand of pop-conservative opinionating has kept him in the top seed of prime-time cable talk shows since he joined Fox News in 1996. “You don’t fish for [terrorists] by putting people in danger.”
But when it comes to Geller’s stunt in Garland, Ingraham seemed to be calling for a time out: “The idea that this is going to be beneficial to us—and I come to it from a Catholic Christian conservative perspective—to rile an entire faith this way … to do what was done at this (contest) … it not only doesn’t accomplish anything, but I think it could actually make things worse for us.””
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/05/08/muslim-bashing-can-be-very-lucrative.html
“People keep asking me why does Pam Geller spew so much anti-Muslim crap? Is it part of her work as a pro-Israel activist? Did she once get food poisoning at a Middle Eastern restaurant? Is it simply because she really, really hates Muslims.
Probably all the above, but one other thing is certain: Geller gets paid pretty well to demonize Muslims. I’m talking to the tune of $200,000 a year. True, that might be walking around money for Donald Trump (who actually bashed Geller this week for her draw the Prophet Mohamed cartoon contest), but that puts her in the top 5 percent of all Americans in terms of annual income. Now, $200,000 doesn’t make a person rich these days (although the $9 million in combined divorce settlement and life-insurance payments she reportedly got certainly qualifies her). But for what she does, it’s handsome pay.
Well, Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy (CSP) in 2012 reported $3.2 million in revenue. And Gaffney, as president, paid himself $300,000 a year for his work in demonizing Muslims.
The bottom line is that the anti-Muslim industry is lucrative and not going anywhere soon. But at least now we can understand why some of these people engage in such hateful activities: It’s a living. And a nice one.“
BamBam, I most certainly question any facts that come from those two individuals. Their reputation as Islamaphobes is known far and wide. What they put out as “facts” are often anything but.
Annie
Even if you are not a “fan” of the previously mentioned individuals, whose articles were included in this thread to explain additional facts about the incident in Texas–information which many did not previously know–does that necessarily make the information provided bogus? You may not like or admire the authors of those articles, yet the facts surfacing regarding this matter don’t change even if the ones relaying those facts are not, in your opinion, from an approved list of valid sources of information. I notice that you don’t question the facts; you just revile the sources.
Well DeDe, you sound an awful and I mean ‘awful’, lot like her. Any more ‘authorities’ on the Muslim scourge you want to share with us? More like Pam Geller or Frank Gaffney Jr.?
Annie the terrorist lover, I’m not “Lisa”, if you were referring to the lady I mentioned in my first post. My name is DeDe Gracey. Just so you can address the right person since you seem to be fixated on another person. Grow up.
Pamela Geller knows a lot more about radical Islam than you could ever know. So I think you are wrong terror loving ms know it all Annie. lol
https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/jewish-groups-stand-in-opposition-to-hate-speech-and-all-forms-of-islamophobia/
“Jews Against Islamophobia Coalition stands strongly in opposition to Islamophobia in all its manifestations. Most recently, the courts ruled that Pamela Geller has the right to put up her virulently anti-Muslim ads on public buses. As a community, we will make our voices heard as forcefully as we can in protest of Islamophobic hate speech.”
“* The ad reads: Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah.”
LOL, Lisa dear, reading comprehension would be a good thing. If rational thought is “terrorized”, it would indeed be a baaaaaad thing.
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/pamela-geller
Pamela Geller is the anti-Muslim movement’s most visible and flamboyant figurehead. She’s relentlessly shrill and coarse in her broad-brush denunciations of Islam and makes preposterous claims, such as that President Obama is the “love child” of Malcolm X. She makes no pretense of being learned in Islamic studies, leaving the argumentative heavy lifting to her Stop Islamization of America partner Robert Spencer. Geller has mingled comfortably with European racists and fascists, spoken favorably of South African racists, defended Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic and denied the existence of Serbian concentration camps. She has taken a strong pro-Israel stance to the point of being sharply critical of Jewish liberals.
Inga – the SPLC is a terrorist organization and has been taken off the approved list of literature for the US Armed Forces. I would have a tendency to take everything they saw with a grain of salt.
“The terrorism of rational thought is the real enemy.”
Lmao, do you really understand what you just said here! Rational thought is terrorism! Omg!
So terrorist loving Annie, tell us how Pamela Geller, a former Muslim herself is a islamaphobe. lol
Texas: Muslim teen blames his “BOMB HOAX” on “islamophobia,” Obama invites him to White House
ByPAMELA GELLER on September 16, 2015
LEFT/ISLAMIC ALLIANCE: MEDIA, INTELLIGENTSIA 265 Comments
Texas Muslim Student
A Muslim teen bought a strange ticking device to his high school that set off alarms and fear. The student was detained for having what resembled a bomb. Officers said the clock and wires inside his Vaultz pencil case looked like a hoax bomb to them. When questioned about the device was, the student, Ahmed Mohamed, wouldn’t answer. Now terror-tied Islamic groups like Hamas-CAIR, their media lapdogs and even President Obama are waging jihad against the school.
This whole thing smells like a set-up. With ISIS in America, and young moderate Muslims fleeing to Syria to join the terror group, the Irving school’s response was rational and reasonable. I run news stories on a weekly basis of American Muslim teens arrested for trying to join ISIS. Just this week, a Philly Muslim teen was arrested for a plot to assassinate the Pope on his US visit.
Every day we are warned of new terror threats, increased threat levels. But trying to protect schoolchildren is “islamophobic.” And President Obama agrees, of course. Yes, he has weighed in.
WFAA: According to Irving police, Ahmed’s case contained a digital clock that the student had taken apart and rearranged. Police said the student had the briefcase in his English class, where he plugged it into an electrical outlet and it started to make noise.
Ahmed told WFAA that his English teacher confiscated his case. A few hours later, the student said the principal and school resource officer pulled him out of class and questioned the high school freshman.
Officers said Ahmed was being “passive aggressive” in his answers to their questions, and didn’t have a “reasonable answer” as to what he was doing with the case.
Investigators said the student told them that it was just a clock that he was messing around with.
“We attempted to question the juvenile about what it was and he would simply only say it was a clock. He didn’t offer any explanation as to what it was for, why he created this device, why he brought it to school,” said James McLellan, Irving Police.
Like I said. It smells like a set-up. Why wasn’t Ahmed forthcoming when questioned?
The teachers were just trying to protect the school and the school children. Islamic supremacists will have have their heads.
Mohamed said problems arose when the clock rang in his back pack in class with a second teacher later in the day. He said he showed that teacher the device after other students had left the room.
“She said, ‘Well it looks like a bomb. Don’t show it to anyone else,’” he said. “And she decides to take it from me.”
The principal referred questions to the district, which released this statement to WFAA:
We always ask our students and staff to immediately report if they observe any suspicious items and/or suspicious behavior. If something is out of the ordinary, the information should be reported immediately to a school administrator and/or the police so it can be addressed right away. We will always take necessary precautions to protect our students and keep our school community as safe as possible.”
Of course, but terror-tied groups like CAIR means to stop any reporting of suspicion of jihad. They mean to punish the vigilant.
Ahmed, his father, and attorneys with CAIR planned to meet with the principal and the police chief on Wednesday afternoon.
“If the family is willing to give us written permission, we would be happy to share with the public the other side of the story so they can understand the actions we took,” Irving Independent School District spokeswoman Lesley Weaver said.
The president, of course, had to insert himself. Is it any wonder 30% of the country thinks he’s a Muslim? He’s invited the kid to the White House.
A 14-year-old North Texas student and his family blame fear of Islam for his arrest on charges of making a “hoax bomb.” NBC News, September 15, 2015:
Ahmed Mohamed, a freshman at Irving MacArthur High School, said he took an electronic clock he built over the weekend to school Monday morning to show his first period engineering teacher his skill with making things.
“I wanted to start clean with the teacher by showing him my inventions and stuff,” he said.
Mohamed said problems arose when the clock rang in his back pack in class with a second teacher later in the day. He said he showed that teacher the device after other students had left the room.
“She said, ‘Well it looks like a bomb. Don’t show it to anyone else,’” he said. “And she decides to take it from me.”
– See more at: http://pamelageller.com/2015/09/texas-muslim-teen-blames-his-bomb-hoax-on-islamophobia.html/#sthash.PjY4VVwG.dpuf
The terrorism of rational thought is the real enemy.