Arrest of 14-Year-Old Student for Making a Clock: the Fruits of Sustained Fear-Mongering and ......

[marmar]

Arrest of 14-Year-Old Student for Making a Clock: the Fruits of Sustained Fear-Mongering and Anti-Muslim Animus
By Glenn Greenwald


There are sprawling industries and self-proclaimed career “terrorism experts” in the U.S. which profit greatly by deliberately exaggerating the threat of Terrorism and keeping Americans in a state of abject fear of “radical Islam.” There are all sorts of polemicists who build their public platforms by demonizing Muslims and scoffing at concerns over “Islamaphobia,” with the most toxic ones insisting that such a thing does not even exist, even as the mere presence of mosques is opposed across the country, or even as they are physically attacked.

The U.S. Government just formally renewed the “State of Emergency” it declared in the aftermath of 9/11 for the fourteenth time since that attack occurred, ensuring that the country remains in a state of permanent, endless war, subjected to powers that are still classified as “extraordinary” even though they have become entirely normalized. As a result of all of this, a minority group of close to 3 million people is routinely targeted with bigotry and legal persecution in the Home of the Free, while fear and hysteria reign supreme in the Land of the Brave.

What happened in Irving, Texas yesterday to a 14-year-old Muslim high school freshman is far from the worst instance, but it is highly illustrative of the rotted fruit of this sustained climate of cultivated fear and demonization. The Dallas Morning News reports that “Ahmed Mohamed — who makes his own radios and repairs his own go-kart — hoped to impress his teachers when he brought a homemade clock to MacArthur High,” but “instead, the school phoned police.”

Despite insisting that he made the clock to impress his engineering teacher, consistent with his long-time interest in “inventing stuff,” Ahmed was arrested by the police and led out of school with his hands cuffed behind him. When he was brought into the room to be questioned by the four police officers who had been dispatched to the school, one of them – who had never previously seen him – said: “Yup. That’s who I thought it was.” As a result, he “felt suddenly conscious of his brown skin and his name — one of the most common in the Muslim religion.” .....................(more)

https://theintercept.com/2015/09/16/arrest-14-year-old-student-making-clock-fruits-15-years-fear-mongering-anti-muslim-animus/

[MineralMan]

1. How things have changed, and not for the better.

When I was 14 and a high school freshman, one of my electronic projects was making a Geiger counter. I found the plans in one of the many electronics magazines at the time (1959) and ordered a Geiger-Mueller tube from Allied Electronics. I remember testing it, using my father's radium-dial watch from WWII. He was a B-17 pilot.

I took it to school, too, and demonstrated it in science class, using my dad's watch and a sample of uranium ore from Arizona. Nobody called the police. Nobody called anyone. I was just a nerdy, skinny kid with a cool project. The same should have been the case for young Ahmed Mohamed. He built a clock. Cool project. Never mind that you can buy a digital clock for $5 almost anywhere. The kid made one.

We should be celebrating this kind of initiative and technological experimentation. That we do not is a damned shame. It reflects badly on our society.

[NV Whino]

2. Oh, oh. The Swiss better look out.

[The2ndWheel]

3. Making the clock wasn't the issue

[Iggo]

5. What was the issue?

[MohRokTah]

6. The issue was making the clock while Muslim

[Fast Walker 52]

10. oh no! A brown dude with some strange electronic device-- it must be a bomb!

So sick and depressing

[The2ndWheel]

9. That it was in his bag and made a noise

And yes, him being Muslim most likely factors into the reaction too.

Nobody did anything when he made it. Nobody did anything when he showed it to the one teacher. People made it a big deal when nobody knew why there was sound coming from his backpack.

He shouldn't have been suspended after they all talked about it. He shouldn't have been arrested. The whole incident didn't happen because he made a working clock at home though. That's a bad headline.

[olddots]

4. Homeland Insecurity is a growth business

[librechik]

7. It wasn't the fucking clock. It was the boy's Islamic name and appearance.

Texas GOVERNMENT is racist. PERIOD.

[Fast Walker 52]

8. so freaking disgusting! I hate the completely bogus war on terrorism and the hate it has inspired

so many fucking things wrong with it.