Muslim Ninth-Grader Arrested for Making A Clock Gets a White House Invite
President Obama invites Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old ninth-grader arrested for making a clock, to the White House.
Earlier this week, Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old ninth-grader at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas, was suspended three days by Irving Independent School District administrators after a clock he made beeped in class. A teacher asked if it was a bomb, and the Sudanese-American student was handcuffed, arrested, taken police headquarters for questioning, and fingerprinted. He won’t be charged -- it’s not against the law to make clocks -- but his suspension and arrest have generated a firestorm of criticism and has even caught the eye of the commander in chief.
Earlier this week, Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old ninth-grader at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas, was suspended three days by Irving Independent School District administrators after a clock he made beeped in class. A teacher asked if it was a bomb, and the Sudanese-American student was handcuffed, arrested, taken police headquarters for questioning, and fingerprinted. He won’t be charged — it’s not against the law to make clocks — but his suspension and arrest have generated a firestorm of criticism and has even caught the eye of the commander in chief.
On Wednesday, President Barack Obama tweeted Mohamed this invitation to visit Washington:
The president’s message is the most high profile one in support of Mohamed, but it’s hardly the first. The hashtag #IStandWithAhmed is now one of the most popular on Twitter; as of 2:50 p.m. Washington time, it had been used more than 634,000 times. Here’s one example:
Look closely, and you’ll notice he’s wearing a NASA t-shirt. The Dallas Morning News, which broke the story, reported Mohamed was a member of the robotics club in junior high, and was looking for something similar as he started high-school. Instead, he was treated like a criminal.
If there’s any upside to this story, the incident might someday land Mohamed a job at Facebook.
Photo Credit: Jim Watson/Getty Images
David Francis was a staff writer at Foreign Policy from 2014-2017.
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