Posted by Benny Huang on September 21, 2015 at 9:47am
Fourteen year-old Ahmed Mohamed has learned well how to play the victim. The MacArthur High School student caused a ruckus last week in Irving, Texas, when he brought a briefcase to school containing clock parts. He claimed it was a “clock” that he “invented” over the weekend—though it now appears evident that he didn’t really invent anything. According to Ahmed, he brought it to school to impress his engineering teacher. When the briefcase began beeping during English class, the teacher mistook it for a bomb and called the principal. The principal appeared minutes later, accompanied by policemen. Ahmed was arrested and charged with creating a hoax bomb, a crime under Texas law, though the charge was later dropped.It sure is hard being a Muslim, isn’t it? You can’t even bring a briefcase with protruding wires to school without everybody thinking you’re a terrorist. Sheesh.Ahmed has since been invited to bring his briefcase to the White House to meet President Obama. Oddly enough, the Secret Service would never in a million years allow a similar device anywhere near the President of the United States if it weren’t pre-cleared; and for good reason.Ahmed also launched his own crowdfunding campaign to help pay for his education and the education of other talented young inventors. His goal is to raise $100,000. As of this writing, he’s already raised $13,237. Pleeeeease give me money! A second crowdsourcing campaign, presumably organized by a sympathetic soul, sprung up on another website. As of this writing, it’s raised $7,720. All proceeds go to Ahmed.Ahmed Mohamed later appeared on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes,” seated next to his Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) lawyer, and wearing a NASA t-shirt (nice touch, kid) and his best pouty face. When Hayes asked Ahmed how it felt to go through this whole ordeal Ahmed replied, “I feel really well after, cause before I didn’t think I was going to get any support because I’m a Muslim boy.” I’m sounding the BS alarm. He captured the world’s sympathy because he’s a Muslim boy. I don’t believe for a moment that he could not have foreseen this outpouring of support (and money).He continued: “So I thought I was just going to be another victim of injustice. But thanks to all my supporters on social media I got this far, thanks to you guys…I see it as a way of people sending a message to the rest of the world that just because something happens to you because of who you are, no matter what you do, people have your back.”See how he’s framed the issue? This is something that “happened” to him because of “who [he is.]” The implication is clear: this whole situation would have played out differently if he had been a fair-skinned Christian lad. Baloney. Any kid of any race or religion who brought the same item to school would have caused the same stir. The only difference I can see is that a white Christian would not have had the Islamophobia card to play. Consequently, he would not have had the support of a dedicated “civil rights” organization, would not have been invited to the White House, would not have been financially rewarded with multiple crowdsourcing campaigns, and would not have appeared on MSNBC.Ahmed was arrested not because of his race or religion but because his “clock” looked like a bomb. It’s a briefcase with a bunch of wires and a circuit board. Nor are clocks and bombs mutually exclusive. Time bombs contain clocks. After showing his “clock” to two teachers, both of them told him that it looked a lot like a bomb. His engineering teacher, the one he was supposedly trying to impress, even advised him not to take it to other classes.There are some clues that Ahmed baited school officials by knowingly bringing a suspicious device to school. It might have been another self-victimization hoax, an attempt to “prove” other people’s prejudices. Self-victimization hoaxes are all too common because society never fails to reward them. I won’t say for certain that that’s what happened. It’s possible that he really did build a clock to impress his engineering teacher, stumbled into this mess quite by accident, then decided to capitalize on his victimhood. In any case, he is trying to capitalize on his victimhood—and not just financially, though he’s doing that too.What are those clues? Let’s start with the fact that his “invention” appears not to be an invention at all. He merely disassembled an old Radio Shack digital clock and mounted the parts in a briefcase. How is that an “invention?” It’s not. It sounds very much like he was trying to build a hoax bomb…which is exactly what he was charged with!Moreover, he continued to carry the “clock” to every class that day, even after his engineering teacher had given him kudos. Ahmed also wrapped wires around the handle “so it wouldn’t look suspicious,” an indication that even Ahmed believed that it resembled a bomb. Of course, having wires visible from the outside made it more suspicious because, unless one has x-ray vision, a hoax bomb inside of a briefcase just looks like a briefcase. Better to make the electronic parts partially visible from the outside.I will say this: the teachers, the principal, and the police did nothing wrong except failing to call his parents immediately. They should have done that. The crybabies at CAIR can go stick it. This is not an Islamophobic conspiracy.Some commentators, including Reason Magazine’s Nick Gillespie and Frontpage Magazine’s Robert Spencer have argued that Ahmed Mohamed was the victim of hysterical overreaction, though they place the blame primarily on “zero tolerance” policies spawned by school shootings.Writes Spencer: “All over the country, school officials are on constant high alert for weapons — a high alert that has more than once spilled over into outright hysteria, with students being suspended for [sketching] guns, pointing fingers at people and saying ‘Bang,’ etc.” Spencer cites another example: Josh Welch, a Maryland seven year-old who was suspended for chewing a Pop-tart into the shape of a gun and pointing it at other kids.I disagree. There are myriad examples of schools overreacting to innocuous behavior but this isn’t one of them. No one in his right mind believes that a seven year-old, armed with a toaster pastry, is going to perpetrate the next Columbine massacre. School officials at MacArthur High School, however, were warranted in reacting the way they did to a fourteen year old carrying a briefcase with protruding wires. Spencer and Gillespie are wrong to suggest any equivalence.I don’t know if Ahmed Mohamed planned this whole thing out though I won’t place it outside the realm of possibility. The situation smells as fishy as last week’s sushi. But I can say with certainty that young Mr. Mohamed, the “inventor” whose “invention” was actually mass-produced by Radio Shack decades before he was born, is milking this for all it’s worth. What he wants is not equal treatment but for Muslims to be handled with kiddy gloves. His goal, and that of CAIR, is to perpetuate the Muslim-as-victim myth so that reasonable people will second-guess their own motives when they see Muslims acting suspiciously. Don’t be fooled by this professional victim.Read more at http://patriotupdate.com/ahmed-mohamed-just-14-and-already-a-professional-islamo-victim/
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