Ahmed Mohamed is a high school teen in Irving, Texas. He wants to become an engineer, and he apparently has a love for NASA based upon his choice of shirts. On Monday, the 14-year-old boy showed his engineering teacher a digital clock he had made out of a pencil case. But instead of praise, the teacher called the police, who had the Muslim teen arrested because it is claimed he made a hoax bomb clock.
In a related report by the Inquisitr , a Sikh man in Chicago was beaten days before the 9/11 anniversary, with his attacker calling him a terrorist like Osama bin Laden because of his religious turban and beard. But it turns out an actual ISIS terrorist living in Florida was a Jewish American named Joshua Ryne Goldberg .
According to WFAA, Irving Police spokesman Officer James McLellan said they had Ahmed Mohamed arrested because the Texas Muslim teen would not clearly identify what exactly the device was and how it operated.
“We attempted to question the juvenile about what it was and he would simply only tell us that it was a clock,” McLellan said, who claimed Ahmed was being “passive aggressive” in his answers to their questions. “It could reasonably be mistaken as a device if left in a bathroom or under a car. The concern was, what was this thing built for? Do we take him into custody?”
The reason everyone was so upset is because the digital clock was contained within a briefcase. The digital clock’s components had been taken apart and rearranged, with the result appearing fairly suspicious.
“She was like, it looks like a bomb,” he said, according to the Dallas Morning News . “I told her, ‘It doesn’t look like a bomb to me.’”
It did not help when Mohamed plugged the briefcase into an electrical outlet in the middle of English class and it began to make a beeping noise.
“They arrested me and they told me that I committed the crime of a hoax bomb, a fake bomb ,” Ahmed Mohamed said.
When police pulled Ahmed out of class, he was led into a room where several other police officers waited. One of these officers allegedly remarked, “Yup. That’s who I thought it was.” Mohamed says this comment made him self-conscious about his brown skin and Muslim beliefs.
Police confiscated the so-called “bomb” clock along with the boy’s tablet. Authorities did not file formal charges but released him to his parents.
The Dallas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said Ahmed was targeted because of his Muslim beliefs.
“I think this wouldn’t even be a question if his name wasn’t Ahmed Mohamed,” said CAIR spokesperson Alia Salem. “He is an excited kid who is very bright and wants to share it with his teachers.”
Ahmed Mohamed’s father believes 9/11 fears are responsible for why his son was seen as a threat.
“He just wants to invent good things for mankind,” said Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed. “But because his name is Mohamed and because of Sept. 11, I think my son got mistreated.”
[Image via Twitter ]