Archive for September 18, 2015
Challenge: To Boldly Not Go Where We Have Gone Too Many Times Already
by John Weckerle
Having repeatedly written against discrimination of all kinds, it was with disappointment that we read this story regarding Irving, Texas high school freshman Ahmed Mohamed (son of a Sudanese immigrant who had run twice for that country’s presidency – and who, according to the Dallas Morning News “once made national headlines for debating a Florida pastor who burned a Quran”), who brought a clock he had made out of spare electronics parts to school to show his engineering teacher. He presented it to the teacher early in the school day, who told him it was “nice” but advised him not to show it to any other teachers. The clock’s alarm went off during his English class, and the teacher stated that it looked like a bomb and confiscated it. The school’s principal called the police. Upon first seeing Mr. Mohamed one of the police officers, whom Mr. Mohamed had never met, reportedly stated “Yup. That’s who I thought it was.” The officers questioned the young man, who asserted truthfully that it was a clock, and he was subsequently handcuffed, arrested, not permitted to contact his parents, fingerprinted, and threatened with charges of creating a hoax bomb because police – while admitting they had no suspicion that it was a bomb – saw “no broader purpose.”
No broader purpose. For a clock?
Now, we admit that clocks, while having their uses, have perhaps certain negative implications as well. They are especially known for going off in the middle of a good dream – and given that this was English class (your editor always enjoyed English, despite the snoring of some of the other students) the clock might have been disruptive in that context. However, the item was clearly not a bomb, and Mr. Mohamedhad showed it to his engineering teacher and explained what it was. With that in mind, the concept that the article was a hoax bomb becomes absurd in the extreme; who on earth would create a hoax bomb, and then show it to a teacher – ensuring that if he did engage in the hoax, a) it would be immediately identified as a fraud, and b) he would be immediately caught and criminally charged?
Now, once it had been established that a) the object was not a bomb, and b) Mr. Mohamed had not in any way, shape, or form done anything to suggest, pretend, or otherwise represent that it was a bomb, or that it had been created as a hoax bomb, the affair could have, and should have, been concluded amicably – and Mr. Mohamed should have been sent on to whatever class awaited him. Instead, authorities treated Mr. Mohamed as if he was a criminal, and marched him in handcuffs through the halls of his school in handcuffs, in full view of his peers.
Other than “graciously” announcing that Mr. Mohamed would not be charged with creating a hoax bomb, the city’s Mayor, Beth Van Duyne (described by the Dallas Morning News as “a national celebrity in anti-Islamic circles”), police department, and school principal continue to justify (rationalize?) their actions. According to the police chief, “We live in an age where you can’t take things like that to school.” Things like what? Clocks? Electronics projects? We live in an age where, if we’re going to prepare engineers, scientists, and inventors to maintain (or perhaps more accurately, recover) the nation’s presence on the global technological stage, “things like that” are going to be coming to school in increasing numbers. If this is the position, then they might as well arrest the entire robotics club and the evildoers at Radio Shack who sell good kids gone bad the parts to build these items.
Let’s face it, readers, as a case of racial/ethnic and/or religious profiling, this situation is not difficult to spot – and given that the local government has decided not to investigate it as such, perhaps external authorities and organizations should do so.
When the Dallas Morning News article first came out, it was nearly heartbreaking to read the last line: “He’s vowed never to take an invention to school again.” To think that a bright talent had been squashed in such a way was tragic. But then…
Mr. Mohamed has been invited to the White House and to a gathering of NASA scientists (he was wearing a NASA t-shirt at the time of his arrest). He’s been contacted by representatives of his “dream school” – MIT – and received an outpouring of support from people throughout American society. And all that, perhaps, gives us some hope that perhaps we are, collectively, better than some of us occasionally make us look.
As is all too often the case, suspicion born of ignorance and bias may well have created an unfortunate situation and likely a violation of a young man’s civil rights. Such things strain relationships within the community and create or strengthen divisions that sap the strength of the community as a whole. Rather than circle the wagons, Irving city and school officials should engage in some serious self-examination and look for ways to be more inclusive and less suspicious of their minority populations.
Some small steps might be easy to take. One way to strengthen relationships might be to allow the Muslim community a greater role in performing the invocation at the City Council meetings. Reviewing the City Council meetings and agendas from January 2013 to date, we found that the Islamic faith was given this opportunity only once, on September 3, 2015. Representatives of other faiths were given multiple opportunities, and a number of individual congregations were represented multiple times. Perhaps a greater degree of inclusion here would
The City Council agendas also indicate that members of the public may speak for up to 3 minutes on essentially any topic; perhaps if a number of Muslim citizens of the greater Dallas area used this time to address this sort of situation and provide good information and suggestions on how to improve relations, the degree of familiarity would increase and the level of discrimination would decrease. We hope that all the people of Irving, and the rest of us, may learn from this unfortunate situation and work together toward a more harmonious and balanced time together.