Teenager Arrested for Bringing home-made Clock to School, Causes Uproar on Twitter

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ahmed

Ahmed Mohamed, a 14 year old boy from a high school in Texas is the source of the current number one trend on Twitter now #IStandWithAhmed due to an incident that was reported by the Dallas Morning News

Apparently, the 9th grader was an ardent fan of robotics when he was in middle school and was trying to pursue his passion in high school. To impress his teacher, he had built a clock at home and took it to school and the events that followed are what sparked an outrage online

When he showed his contraption to his teacher, the teacher allegedly advised him not to show it to any other teacher and went ahead to keep it. Ahmed was later on pulled out of class by a police officer and his principal who led him to a room where he was interrogated by other police officers.

The police apparently did not believe his claims that it was just a simple homemade clock. To make it worse, it was stored in his pencil case which had also other circuits which made it more suspicious.  The questions that were asked like “So you tried to make a bomb” and Ahmed replied by saying he was trying to make a clock and the police officer went ahead to say “It looks like a movie bomb to me“. He has been since suspended by the principal and  was arrested which is shown by this tweet by an activist:

The most striking factor about the photo posted is how Ahmed was arrested while wearing a NASA t-shirt, which as we know is heavily involved with engineering and it could be his dream to work for them in the future. In light of this arrest, people on Twitter voiced their opinion on the matter where they highlighted stereotyping and double standards. These are some of the tweets posted by different people including famous people:

https://twitter.com/ridinwifdatnina/status/644177536331710464

 

 

There is also a selfie of Ahmed and an attorney who wants to represent him

This is another case of social media being used positively and you can be sure that Ahmed’s story will be seen as how justice was sought on social media to squash a stereotype.