And that is completely consistent with Harris’s suggestion that people who “look like they could conceivably be Muslim” are more likely to be a threat – why should it matter whether it’s in an airport or a school? The reaction that was “ridiculous and unwarranted” would almost certainly not have happened if instead of a brown boy named Ahmed Mohamed, the clockmaker was a white boy named Andrew Morris. Granted that Harris was specifically referring to airport security when he made his recommendation that suspicion of terrorist intent should be focused on what he considers to be an actual threat: “Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim.” But airport policies have now been extended to many public buildings, tourist attractions, sports arenas, etc. Septemat 6:36 I have read Sam Harris’s position, and also seen his inability or refusal to accept rational arguments against his position on airport security – Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. Soon after the press conference, Obama tweeted:Ĭool clock, Ahmed.

A talented kid, yes, but still just a kid. Except to Ahmed, but hey, he’s just some kid. “The follow-up investigation revealed the device apparently was a homemade experiment, and there’s no evidence to support the perception he intended to create alarm,” Boyd said. He was later released to his parents, Boyd said. Boyd said Ahmed was then handcuffed “for his safety and for the safety of the officers” and taken to a juvenile detention center.

School officers questioned Ahmed about the device and why he’d brought it to school. Oooooh yeah, and so is the inside of this laptop I’m typing on, and so is the inside of every computer in MacArthur High School, along with all the phones and tablets and every other ELekTronIck device anyone in the building has. God bless America.Īt a press conference this morning, Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd said charges won’t be filed against Ahmed Mohamed, the MacArthur High School freshman arrested Monday after bringing what school officials and police described as a “hoax bomb” on campus.īoyd said the device - confiscated by an English teacher despite the teen’s insistence that it was a clock - was “certainly suspicious in nature.” A kid makes a techy creative science project clock and takes it to school and he gets arrested. 'We can band together to stop this racial inequality and prevent this from happening again.Fabulous. It had been tweeted more than 800,000 times by Wednesday afternoon, according to analytics site .īesides the White House invite, Ahmed also got an invite to meet Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg drive Nasa's Opportunity rover tour the Massachusetts Institute of Technology intern at Twitter and visit Google.Īhmed's family has launched a Twitter account to thank his supporters. '#IStandWithAhmed' became the top trending hashtag on Twitter. The Council on American-Islamic Relations said the heavy-handed response was suspicious, given the anti-Muslim political climate across the nation.Ī photo of Ahmed in handcuffs was retweeted thousands of times in hours. White House spokesman Josh Earnest called the incident an opportunity to 'search our own conscious for biases that might be there'. Ahmed said the police still had his clock.

A photo provided by the police showed a flat, rectangular red digital clock face screwed into the dark plush interior of a silver case along with a circuit board and some wires. 'We live in an age where you can't take things like that to school.'Ī school district spokesman also stood by the response, saying anyone who saw the homemade clock would understand that 'we were doing everything with an abundance of caution'. That's a very suspicious device,' he said. 'Our reaction would have been the same either way. Irving police chief Larry Boyd insisted that Ahmed's ethnicity had nothing to do with the response.

Nice clock ahmed meme