Police Arrest 14-Year-Old Muslim Science Wiz For Bringing Homemade CLOCK To School

by M. David and M.A. Hussein
Counter Current News
Sep. 16, 2015

Irving MacArthur High student Ahmed Mohamed loves science. Mohamed is only 14-years-old, but he has already been in his school’s robotics club, and is a great inventor.

But it was his clever inventions that got him taken away from school, by police, in handcuffs, and sent to the Irving, Texas juvenile detention center.

Police say that he may now face charges of making a hoax bomb, even though he never made any claims that his invention was a bomb, and he never threatened anyone.

Apparently the mere presence of a clock in the hands of a Muslim-American youth is enough to make both school officials and the police think that a crime has been committed.

The police even acknowledge that Mohamed told everyone who would listen that his invention was a clock. None of that matters in today’s America.

Mohamed makes his own radios and has repaired his own go-kart. He thought that bringing in his new invention – a homemade electronic clock -- would impress his teachers at MacArthur High.

But on Monday, when he showed his teachers the circuit-stuffed pencil case, his teachers told him they thought it looked like a bomb, and police agreed.

Now, his clock is sitting in an evidence room.

Now, Ahmed has been suspended.

"Here in high school, none of the teachers know what I can do," Ahmed explained from his room, as the local Dallas News interviewed him.

Ahmed said he hoped that his clock would show the teachers how good he was at throwing together spare parts to make electronic devises.

But when he showed the engineering teacher first thing Monday morning, the teacher could only see see his skin color and religion.

"He was like, 'That's really nice,'" Ahmed recalled. "'I would advise you not to show any other teachers.'"

In English class, a teacher complained after the alarm went off. He showed her the invention after class and apologized that the alarm had interrupted class.

"She was like, it looks like a bomb," Mohamed said.

"I told her, 'It doesn't look like a bomb to me.'"

The teacher called the principal. The principal called the police.

Ahmed was pulled out of sixth period and arrested.

Four other police officers waited for the one who grabbed him. Once there, one of the officers said: "Yup. That's who I thought it was."

Ahmed had never seen him before, so he had no choice but to assume that this meant the officer had racially profiled him.

The principal and police told him that unless he signed a confession statement then he would be expelled from school.

"They were like, 'So you tried to make a bomb?'" Ahmed recalled.

"I told them no, I was trying to make a clock."

"He said, 'It looks like a movie bomb to me.'"

The officers interrogated him for several periods, never letting up.

Even now, the police admit "we have no information that he claimed it was a bomb," McLellan said. "He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation."

Police say they are “still investigating.”

"They thought, 'How could someone like this build something like this unless it's a threat?'" Ahmed stated.

"He just wants to invent good things for mankind," Ahmed's father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, said. "But because his name is Mohamed and because of Sept. 11, I think my son got mistreated."

Ahmed Mohamed is still at home on suspension, and facing potential criminal charges for inventing a clock. He never committed any crime other than being a brown Muslim teenager in Texas.

If you are sick and tired of racist cops and school officials persecuting members of minority groups, call the Irving Police Department at (972) 273-1010 and MacArthur High at (972) 600-7200 and let them know how you feel!