Monday is a day that we all dread as high school students, but imagine going to first period, having a project due, showing it to your teacher, and accusing you of making a bomb. Instantly, your palms start sweating, your mind starts racing, and you can’t get words to come out of your mouth. Unfortunately that’s what happened to Ahmed Mohamed, a freshman at MacArthur High School in Irving, TX.
On Monday, Sept 14, Mohamed came into school, proud to have made his own clock, only to be falsely accused of making a hoax-bomb by not only his teacher, but also the police.
In an interview last Wednesday, with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, Mohamed said he’d been pulled out of class by his principal and five officers. Afterwards, he had been taken into a room and was interrogated for an hour and a half. When he asked if he could call his parents, the police responded with “No, you can’t call your parents… You’re in the middle of an interrogation at the moment.”
“I felt like I was a criminal,” the 14 year old said. “I felt like I was a terrorist. I felt like all the names I was called just because of my race and my religion.” (He had been called a terrorist, a bomb maker, and other derogatory terms.)
Mohamed had been released from school at 3 p.m. and later taken into Juvenile Detention where he was fingerprinted and escorted to his parents. After the arrest, he was suspended for three days.
According to Elhassan Mohamed, Ahmed’s dad, he will not be returning to MacArthur High School. His family has not yet decided on where he’d be going, but they are exploring options both inside and outside of the United States.
However, the Mohamed families story does not end there. Ahmed went from handcuffs to fame real quick. He has been receiving countless support from several people around the nation, including support from Mark Zuckerberg, MIT, Hillary Clinton, and even the President of the United States.
“I was scared at the moment, but now I feel really happy,” Ahmed said. “I’m getting all this support from all over the world. And the support isn’t just for me but for everyone who has been through this. I will fight for you if you can’t stand up for yourself.”
“Cool clock, Ahmed,” President Obama said on Twitter. “Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.”
There are two sides to every story, however. Irving’s Mayor, Beth Van Duyne went on Facebook to defend the school district and the police force, claiming that their city is “one of the safest cities in the country.”
“I do not fault the school or the police for looking into what they saw as a potential threat,” Van Duyne wrote. “We have all seen terrible and violent acts committed in schools… Perhaps some of those could have been prevented and lives could have been spared if people were more vigilant.”
Either way, the support the public has been giving to Ahmed has been continuing to grow tremendously, and his Facebook messages have been flooded with positive messages from people around the nation.
What comes into play when a situation like this occurs in the nation, or even in the world, is; does this type of social injustice pertain to our community, to our town, in our school? Let us know what you think.
You can watch a short clip on Ahmed’s story here.
