My Verdict on Ahmed’s Case

For one whole week, 14-year-old Ahmed bathed in colossal amounts of publicity for being arrested for putting together a digital clock and bringing it to school. He was interrogated, taken to a juvenile centre and had mugshots taken of him. Social media went ballistic and painted this incident as islamophobic and racist. After seeing both opposing and supportive stances taken on this matter, I decided to do my own research and formulate my opinion.

I was enraged by the fact that a mere 14-year-old was humiliated in front of his peers, handcuffed and taken to a juvenile centre. No kid should have to go through that. These processes were absolutely unnecessary as the police later stated that they knew that the clock wasn’t a bomb and that Ahmed had no intention of blowing up the school. They dubbed the clock as a hoax bomb. But according to Texas’s penal code, Ahmed and his clock don’t meet the requirements of possessing a hoax bomb. So this begs the question, why was he arrested?

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Most of the people who have had a backseat to this incident have chalked up this event as islamophobic. Ahmed is a boy who shared a religion and a name with those who were accused by Americans with terrorism. Also, given the history of islamophobia in USA, It’s no surprise that this arrest was deemed islamophobic. Texas’s mayor and education board has been known to have islamophobic mentalities so there is great chance that this incident was too. But we won’t really know that for sure unless we take a ride inside the teacher’s and police men’s minds because there wasn’t any verbal evidence of it.

Now coming to the topic of the object in question. Could the clock be mistaken for a bomb, with its LED panel and wires? Absolutely yes. But Ahmed told his engineering teacher that it was a clock so she should have informed this to the principal, the policemen and the English teacher who clearly got so terrified by it. During these turn of events, surely there must have been communication between Ahmed and his teachers, to convince them that it was a clock. In the end, we don’t really know what series of steps went down which prevented Ahmed to speak his part.  

Ahmed got tons of high-profile attention from people like Obama and Mark Zuckerberg which was actually surprising because tons of incidents similar to this have happened, yet this one got the most attention. This led to conspiracy theorists jumping on the idea that this was one elaborate stunt to garner sympathy and publicity for Muslims. All these publicly prominent invites to places like the Whitehouse and the Google HQ were probably a way of showing these famous people in a favourable light, but at least he gets to visit these places and get support. If Obama can show sympathy for this oppressed Muslim so publicly, he should also display the ways he can prevent events like these from happening.

Negatively minded people have been blaming the publicity of this event as a leftist policy of victimization, by showing Ahmed as a victim of Islamophobia. This might not have been an islamophobic event but it was easy to think so because islamophobia has been so widespread in America. There’s no need to even deny it. And If you are really going to use examples of white kids being suspended for actions like shaping a pop tart in the shape of a gun and asking why weren’t they invited to the White House, you should try something called sensibility. Ahmed was arrested and discouraged for his creative process of making something technological and that’s why he was invited to places like MIT to enhance his interests in technology and give him support. That kid who shaped the pop tart could have gotten an invite from the Pop Tart factory, why don’t you pester them?

There are a lot of holes in this story and we won’t be actually able to know the genuine reason behind this arrest. Any teenager, let alone a black Muslim shouldn’t have to go through this humiliating incident, no matter how it was motivated. And to the people who are still debating over it, I say: Move on from the past and focus on preventing this incident from happening again.