How to Get Arrested In Two Easy Steps: (1) Be Named Ahmed, (2) Build a Clock

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


From Fox News:

The incident went viral on social media and the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed was the top non-promoted U.S. trend on Twitter early Wednesday morning. Some supporters alleged Mohamed was arrested only because of his name, or the way he looked. Others claimed the situation was a case of Islamaphobia.

What went viral? And why quote Fox News on the subject? More on that in a moment.

The topic here is Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old robotics geek at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas. He decided to build an electronic clock to show off to his teacher, and ended up arrested instead. Apparently it beeped during his English class, and his English teacher decided it looked kind of like a bomb. So it was confiscated and Ahmed was led off in handcuff and then suspended for three days. This despite the fact that (a) it wasn’t a bomb, (b) nobody thought it was a bomb, and (c) Ahmed told everyone who saw it that it was a clock. After the incident, the school sent out a letter to all parents not admitting any fault, but basically bragging about how vigilant they’d been and recommending that they review the school’s Code of Conduct with their kids.

So why link to Fox News on the subject? To highlight the fact that, as near as I can tell, conservative blogs and websites have all but ignored this story. That’s even though it practically saturated my Twitter feed last night and, as Fox says, went viral on social media. I realize that this kind of thing doesn’t interest conservatives much, but it’s such a blatant and stupid abuse of power that you’d think it would at least give them an opportunity to show that occasionally they care about obvious bigotry like this. Plus they’d get to take a shot at a public school and its stupid overpaid administrators. What more do they want?

UPDATE: I see that President Obama and Hillary Clinton have just tweeted messages of support for Ahmed. I think it’s safe to say that conservative outlets will now start to weigh in. But it poses a dilemma for them. Even conservatives can’t really defend what happened here. On the other hand, they can hardly agree with Obama, can they? What to do?

My guess: defend Ahmed, but somehow make the claim that Obama’s terrorist-appeasing ways are responsible for an all-too-understandable suspicion of brown people. It’s a win-win!

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate