Ahmed Mohamed’s “reward”
for bringing a homemade clock to school was to be placed in handcuffs, dispatched to a juvenile detention centre
and have it made clear to him that the ticking device might be something much
more sinister.
Indeed, it was
suggested he was carrying a bomb and police have reportedly told him he might
be charged with making a hoax explosive device.
“I have lost my innocence. I
can never look at the world in the same way,” the teenager – currently
suspended from school - told The
Independent.
“I like science, but
I look like a threat because of my brown skin.”
The 14-year-old said
he had assembled the clock from a piece of circuit board and other things he
had found in father’s garage. It had taken him just 10 or 15 minutes.
He said that when he
showed it to his engineering teacher at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas,
he was advised not to show it to anyone else in case they got the wrong
impression. “He told me it looked like a bomb,” he said.
The youngster said
he ignored the teacher’s warning and did indeed show it to another teacher.
“She said it looked a bomb, and called the police.”
The teenager said he
was taken away in handcuffs and in the absence of his mother or father. “They
took me there without my parents. They made me feel like a criminal,” he said.
The boy’s father, Mohamed
Elhassan Mohamed, said the first he learned of the controversy was when he
received a call from the Irving Police Department saying “my son had been
arrested for making a bomb”.
“My son is very
upset, very shocked,” he said. “He wants to be like Einstein. He has so many
ideas. He does not have an evil bone in him.”
He said he believed
his son had been targeted because of his name, his religion and his colour.
“I think it is
because of Islamophobia and the [impact] of 9/11,” he said. Asked if be
believed his son would have been detained for the clock had he not been Muslim,
he said: “No”.
Mr Mohamed moved to
the US from Sudan and has twicereturned to
his country to contest the presidency as a candidate for the National Reform
Party.
He also made
national headlines in the US four years ago when he agreed to debate the
Koran with the controversial Florida pastor, a somewhat bizarre event which
ended with him with the Muslim holy book being burned.
“When I go and campaign in the
Sudan I talk about the US as example of fairness and justice,” he said. “But
this shows we still have problems.”
Mr Mohamed said he
planned to talk to a lawyer and was considering taking legal action over the
incident, which was firstreported by
the Dallas
Morning News.
On Wednesday, Irving
Police Chief Larry Boyd said at
a news conference that while the clock the youngster bought had looked
"suspicious in nature", he considered the case closed.
"We live in an
age where you can't take things like that to school," he said.
School district
spokeswoman, Lesley Weaver, defended the
school’s decision to arrest the boy. “We will always take necessary precautions
to protect our students and to keep our school community as safe as possible,”
she said.
This spring, the city council endorsed one
of several bills under discussion in the Texas Legislature that would forbid judges
from rulings based on "foreign laws", legislation opponents view as
unnecessary and driven by anti-Muslim sentiment.
The city's mayor,
Beth Van Duyne, was given a "freedom award" from a conservative group
for her so-called stance against Sharia law. On Wednesday, Ms Van Duyne also defended the school's actions.
Mr Mohamed said
despite what had happened, his son had not been put off from his wish to become
an inventor. He said he more than 20 inventions.
He said he had told
his son: “When you are trying to be good, sometimes other things can hinder
you.”
Ahmed said he was
also determined not to let what happened get in his way. “I am going to carry
on,” he said. “I cannot let them stop me.”
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