The Nightly Show - Panel - Ahmed Mohamed's Controversial Arrest

A talented, tech-savvy Muslim teenager gets arrested for bringing a homemade alarm clock to his Texas high school.

[JuanRamirez-jhub]

Sister accused of threatening to blow up school previously. Father is an activist. He did not "invent" the clock, he simply put an existing clock into a case. What a hero.

[SFVone]

Wait, the *engineering* teacher didn't know it was a clock? Wow.

[Cristofre]

I'm an electronics technician and I can tell you exactly what he did:

He took apart a typical cheap Chinese digital clock, then picked up the pieces, moved them over to a pencil case, and then haphazardly screwed the bits into the case.
The components in the picture are the same as you would find in almost any digital clock you would buy off the shelf at Walmart.

He didn't design the circuit, he didn't even solder the bits together.

My guesses as to why he might do this: To impress teachers, students by implying he had designed or constructed the circuitry himself. He just wanted the same thing most 14 year olds want- attention and appreciation, to fit in and be liked.

Obviously the average person is never going to unscrew the clock by their bed to see what is inside of it, so they wouldn't recognize this for what it is.
The average person HAS seen numerous movies with digital timers hooked to explosive materials, and so that is the image they went with upon seeing this.

[jraelien]

Now that we know for a fact that this was a publicity stunt will this clown apologize for his deprecating and completely false statements about Texas?

[MoonsMalak]

Hey, give them a break. They thought it was a bomb. They even called in the Bomb squad. Oh wait, they didn't. At least they evacuated the school. They didn't do that either!!

Well, if it was a bomb, it would have been a tragedy but at least the police arrested the person responsible who would have died with the bomb anyway.

Way to go Islamophobia for keeping schools safe.

[robdog]

hold on, an engineering teacher didn't even know it was a clock? and why wasn't the school evacuated?

[TheVlog]

So, hold on, you want me to believe that an engineering teacher wasn't able to tell it was a clock?!
And, three teachers and a principle thought it was a bomb, but they didn't call a lockdown or evacuate the school?
They didn't get people get people away from the bomb, like they're supposed to?

[Zultiner]

Love how they fail to mention that his engineering teacher told him NOT to show the clock to anyone else because of the way it looked. Ahmed then took his advice and showed it to 5 other teachers before the 6th one called the cops. But ignore that.

[JV-ltbx]

No kid would get away bringing something like that to school, especially the first school day after 911. Definitely looking to make a story, with hos Nasa shirt on, hahaha

[ericwarncke]

He didn't "make a clock". He bought an alarm clock at a Wal-Mart, took the plastic casing off of it, then put it inside of a pencil box. That's not really an invention.

[AlienRelics]

Too bad so many won't research the story. I see loads of comments that prove that. His engineering teacher advised him not to show it to other teachers, then it started beeping in his English class. It was his English teacher who thought it might be a bomb. Not entirely unreasonable especially with people hyped up by loads of TV shows and movies, but it was the cascade of events that followed that boggle the mind.

The school -wasn't- evacuated, so why was he arrested? The English teacher, who seemed to think it looked like a bomb, left it in the classroom full of kids.

In Texas, the laws surrounding things that look like or could be mistaken for a bomb are extremely vague. Even if the police knew early on that it wasn't a bomb, they were likely trying to ascertain if it was a prank and meant to have the appearance of a bomb.

What I really don't get is why after the police let him go and the Irving police chief said “There’s no evidence to support the perception he intended to create alarm, " the school -still- suspended him for three days.

In my experience, there is a lot of nerdophobia in this country. People are and have been openly hostile to anyone displaying intelligence since before I was born. I think we need to dial back a bit of the left-wing rage that has already resulted in several people being bullied off the internet for slightly disagreeing with some aspects of the overwhelming attacks against every Texan. Events in the world, like the people in it, are not white or black, but many shades in between.

The peculiar thing about all this is that we've had many more successful non-Muslim (I'll say it, Christian) terrorist attacks in the USA. I can't know (and neither can you) how or if this had gone differently had it been a white Christian 14 year old. I have my suspicions, but that is all they are. The school says they'd have and will do the same to a white kid doing the same, so I guess they are equally bigoted against all smart kids, then?

I think a big issue in this, in my opinion, is that an educated adult could look at that and not see that there was nothing inside that looks like an explosive. And that an educated adult, after deciding it looks like a bomb, left it in a classroom, heck, an entire school full of kids. That feels more like someone who knows it isn't a bomb but wants to punish a kid for disrupting class (the beeps it emitted during class).

[providencee-wq]

Two Ahmeds in Ahmed Mohamed. Remaining word MO stands for...NTH BECAUSE NAMES DO NOT DEFINE US.

[jamesfeldman]

By now, every intelligent person knows that this 14 year old kid is a liar and didn't invent anything. He simply took a Radio Shack Micronta model clock from the 1980s that he probably picked up on eBay and simply took out the existing electronic circuitry and transferred the Radio Shack clock to a pencil box There is also no question that the clock in the pencil box was made to look like a bomb. The punk gives himself away as a liar in a video where he says that he wrapped the container up so it wouldn't look like a "threat" and it wouldn't look "suspicious." Now, why would an "inventor" of a simple "clock" be concerned about a "threat" or arousing "suspicions, " unless, of course, he were really trying to make the device look like a bomb? This punk didn't create or invent anything and is a fraud. The stunt was obviously done for political purposes.

[JeremyLintel]

For those who question why this kid would bring in a homemade clock to school in a case. My response would be, how else would you house a combination of circuit boards and wires, etc.? Would you just simply let it get tossed around in a backpack and get damaged in the process? There's a reason why bombs are stored in suit cases. It's the best way of keeping all the parts together and carry it around. But just because bombs are stored that way, that doesn't mean that everything that is stored that way MUST be a bomb or MUST be made to look like a bomb. If Ahmed really wanted to make a "hoax bomb" he would have at least leave it lying around somewhere unattended. Instead, he proudly showed his Engineering teacher who complimented him on it. There's been a lot of misinformation on this story. i try to clear things up in a long post I wrote in my blog. So go there if you're interested.

[Disatiere]

Still better than a kid walks into the school with a bomb and they think it's a clock.

Obviously it was poorly handled but what do you expect, it's texas.

[HazelWorldwide]

So if they were soooo concerned with everyone's safety, why didn't the school get evacuated? Shouldn't that be any responsible principal's first instinct?

[banandababa]

If his teacher (an engineering teacher at that) really thought it was a bomb, the school would have been evacuated. She is obviously aware that it was a clock and knows the talent of her own student who is clearly interested in making things. There is no doubt in my mind she called the police to humiliate him and also because of her prejudiced views. Someone like that shouldn't be allowed to teach.

[jonahs]

3:56 I live in Texas, and I'm not even offended.

[isharaheem]

One of my friends who goes to MacArthur says that the teacher who took this clock and gave to Principle for him to deal with and followed federal law of school safety act, and is now receiving death threats... the teacher's sister is married to a Muslim man.. i bet this family is sitting around laughing being like wow yea we are all such islamophobes... islamophobia is real and nasty this is not the case... why wont boy and family meet with school admin and police to sign papers to allow them to talk about it. Let it be a fair fight. Because now they can't because of privacy act between student and teacher known as FERPA!!!!

[jeremybr]

Here's the thing for those of you lacking in any sort of common sense. Should the teachers have been concerned? Yes. In this day of age, with school shootings a frequent occurrence, its not at all surprising that teachers and school officials are on edge, to say the least. I don't think this was a total case of Islamaphobia, though I will contend that the name Mohamed probably didn't help. Its not the school or the teachers who fucked up. Its the police that fucked up. And I hate saying that because Ive been a big supporter of law enforcement in a day when they are getting little of it. But in this case, they screwed up. The big question I have to ask is, why arrest this kid BEFORE any kind of expert can conclusively confirm that its an actual explosive device!!!??? If you wish to detain the kid then thats fine. But this should consist of him sitting in a room with his parents. Not freaking handcuffed for all the world to see!! That was just monumentally stupid.