Ahmed Mohamed Moving to Qatar

[Ranger2]

Ahmed Mohamed, the young Muslim-American whose homemade clock was mistaken for a bomb at school, is moving to Qatar to participate in the Young Innovators Program.

He and his parents have rightly spoken out against Islamophobia in the United States. The stereotype of Muslims building bombs is all-too widespread and prominent. That said, I think it weaken's Ahmed's family's message against Islamophobia by leaving the United States and moving to a country where expatriate workers toil in inhuman conditions, free speech is censored, LGBT rights are nonexistent, and all religions except Sunni Islam must be kept discreet by law.

I understand the purpose of his move is purely to study technology. But if the Mohamed family wants to send a stronger message against discrimination in the United States, they should stay here and do so. Otherwise their example sends the false message that there is no place for Muslims in America, that if faced with adversity they should just "go home." I don't blame Ahmed for deciding to move to Qatar but he should know the larger message he is indirectly sending.

[Profanity]

He was offered an incredible opportunity to change his life and build himself into the man he wants to be. If he wants to accept the offer from Qatar, so be it.

His options in the US are pinched. His life in his home town has been converted into a joke. Any chance of being seen as normal is gone. He's hated by a huge minority within the national audience of the US because of a conspiracy theory which implies that he is either (a) incompetent (b) a terrorist or (c) the son of a manipulative person who was trying to use his children build a case against Islamophobia in Texas. He can't do anything within the US without running into barriers as a direct result of the actions of his school district's employees.

When it was announced that his family's lawyer was seeking $15 million and a written apology in damages from the school district, there was a huge backlash which only furthered the public perception that the Mohamed family are trying to make money from this whole ordeal, with very little public understanding of the events as far as I've seen.

I don't think you can expect a 14 year old boy to just accept the brutality of having his reputation smeared on the national stage and stick around to support a moral argument.

[Feoric]

At 11/27/15 03:51 AM, lapis wrote: I'm in Team Dawkins on this one.

Dawkins thinks Ahmed intentionally took the innards of the clock out because he had the amazing foresight of knowing how the school officials and police would have reacted to the contraption. That's more dubious of a claim than calling Ahmed an "inventor."

edit: I'm not smart enough to figure out how to do something like that (i.e; manipulate an entire nation) at 26, let alone 15. then again i am a straight white male, so it probably wouldn't have worked out favorably for me regardless. looks like Ahmed needs to check his reverse-privilege.

[Feoric]

At 11/27/15 12:18 PM, lapis wrote: The 15 million dollar lawsuit, after Obama and a whole range of US public figures bent over backwards to voice their appreciation of him, only lends credibility to the theory that it was a deliberate provocation, not necessarily conceived by the kid himself, but from his activist father.

This is where I lose you. I'm having a hard time seeing the connection between Activist Father and White House Invitation. Doesn't that say more about the administration's PR policy w/r/t Muslims rather than the direct result of a masterfully Machiavellian father?

I don't have a problem with the 15 million dollar lawsuit. If you hire a lawyer and you have a credible case to make, go for it. They're obviously reaching, but that's the point of a settlement. Sue for 15 and hope for 1. All US citizens have that right.

Is your father by any chance someone with a history of political activism and struggle against 'Islamophobia'? Besides, at best that only proves you're not as ingenious as Phuc Dat Bich.

Not exactly, but incidentally he is an engineer, so if I asked him how to make a convincing faux-bomb apparatus he could certainly help. Not that I would, for whatever three letter agency is reading this.

If I wanted to do something analogous to what the Mohamed family did, I'd go for a ride with my bicycle in a deserted park at night, and if I'd spot a woman cycling alone I'd start cycling behind her at a three-foot distance for a couple of minutes and if after leaving the park she'd muster the courage to ask what the Hell I was doing, yell "how dare you assume I'm a rapist just beause I'm male" and go on Twitter to share how I "exposed" her misandry. But, as you say, I doubt I'd get a lot of sympathy.

I'm not sure if that analogy fits. Your analogy assumes you're intentionally following someone in order to get a reaction. There's no evidence that Ahmed made whatever the fuck pencil-case-clock he "made" with the intent of disturbing his peers, other than speculation of manipulation based on his father's credentials.

[Warforger]

At 11/27/15 12:48 AM, Ranger2 wrote: I understand the purpose of his move is purely to study technology. But if the Mohamed family wants to send a stronger message against discrimination in the United States, they should stay here and do so. Otherwise their example sends the false message that there is no place for Muslims in America, that if faced with adversity they should just "go home." I don't blame Ahmed for deciding to move to Qatar but he should know the larger message he is indirectly sending.

Jesus what the fuck is wrong with people? He's just a kid who got caught with a clock that looked like a bomb. He's going to Qatar because he has a full scholarship. Maybe instead of charging for school the United States should make it free and he probably wouldn't have gone. Indians take advantage of the system all the time. They send their kids to primary school in the US where it's free, then send them to India for secondary education where it's much cheaper than in America, and in certain cases much better as with the Indian Institute of Technology (they have to pay for Primary school in India). Hell other people have gone to university in places like Uruguay or Mexico simply because it was free, a trend they had to respond to IIRC. Why the hell must every Muslim family automatically be an activist example against extremist Islam? No one would bat an eye if a Christian studied abroad in Norway or Russia or Germany, no one would say "It's setting an example that there's no place for Christians here and that they should just return home".

This story isn't about Islam; it's about how ridiculously expensive education is in America and how undervalued it is at the government level.

[Feoric]

At 11/27/15 01:29 PM, X-Gary-Gigax-X wrote: Remember when nobody gave a shit about this?

Clearly somebody gave a shit about it, otherwise you would have been unable to link a news article about it.

The dad and the media are milking this clock-boy thing for all it's worth for simple political reasons only.

Good for them.

[orangebomb]

At 11/27/15 01:24 PM, Warforger wrote: This story isn't about Islam; it's about how ridiculously expensive education is in America and how undervalued it is at the government level.

That may be, (though in fairness, America has the best education on a collegiate level by far and the stuff that they do doesn't come cheap) but how do you explain his father basically exploiting the sympathy and asking for $15 million? I feel sorry for the boy, but when the parents try to guilt trip everybody in a deliberate manner, let's just say that we shouldn't ignore the 800 pound gorilla in the room.

[Feoric]

At 11/27/15 05:56 PM, orangebomb wrote: That may be, (though in fairness, America has the best education on a collegiate level by far and the stuff that they do doesn't come cheap) but how do you explain his father basically exploiting the sympathy and asking for $15 million?

Again, what evidence exists to support the notion that the father is some sort of unscrupulous puppetmaster?

[Warforger]

At 11/27/15 05:56 PM, orangebomb wrote: That may be, (though in fairness, America has the best education on a collegiate level by far and the stuff that they do doesn't come cheap)

Except universities in other countries with comparable education don't cost as much, like Oxford or Indian Institute of Technology. Also the same education didn't nearly cost as much decades ago even if adjusted for inflation.

but how do you explain his father basically exploiting the sympathy and asking for $15 million? I feel sorry for the boy, but when the parents try to guilt trip everybody in a deliberate manner, let's just say that we shouldn't ignore the 800 pound gorilla in the room.

I wasn't defending that, just the notion that Muslims somehow have to all be political activists.

[Feoric]

At 11/28/15 08:28 AM, lapis wrote: I mean, I can imagine several scenarios in how this happened: maybe the kid put together the clock with his father then encouraging him to take it to school. And you can never prove anything nonetheless. But I find the suggestion of intent more plausible than just complete ignorance about the security climate in the US in particular.

And other US citizens have the right not to have any respect for the actions of the family. Seriously, the most notiworthy aspect of this whole affair is that it has done absolutely nothing to aid the struggle against 'Islamophobia'. If the family had accepted the security-motivated explanation of the school, basked in being courted by the Obama adminstration for a while and then affirmed their commitment to the US, then they could have at least make a few people in the 'Islamophobic' camp feel like dicks. Now, all they have done is polarise the debate about it further.

Would a 15 year old really make that connection? Doesn't 'blissful ignorance' come with the territory of being a teenager? I guess I'm more concerned with Occam's Razor rather than designing different plausible scenarios in order to establish intent, because, like you said, there's really no way to prove anything.

So, because of that, there's nothing in the way of me thinking that Ahmed most likely made whatever it is that he made independent of his parents' knowledge, then the situation happened, then came the headlines, then came various shameless PR stunts from Twitter, Google, etc in conjunction with the political theater, then came the lawyers (perhaps not in that specific order). I think it's far more likely that outside sources are exploiting the family rather than the other way around. There's more evidence that third parties reached out to the family first rather than the family reaching out to them. With a high profile case like that, I would wager that it's nearly impossible to not be solicited by lawyers. Why would you turn that opportunity down if you have a solid case to make?

The Mohamed family really has no obligation to become figureheads in the fight against Islamophobia in America. I mean, isn't them fucking off to Qatar exactly the sort of thing Islamophobics want anyway? Isn't that a huge component of anti-refugee rhetoric, to seek refuge in a country that is more culturally compatible? Why would that polarize the debate? If anything it pacifies it because they're not acting as token talking heads, and thus not generating more unwanted headlines.

In my analogy, my intent is irrelevant. The woman also does not know my intent, for all she knows I'm just cycling behind her to stay out of the wind and completely ignorant about the fact that tailgating someone on a bicycle in a dark, deserted park at the very best means I have no regard for her security concerns. If I really were that ignorant, would you say that I'd be right in a making a fuss about it on Twitter?

Of course, much more ignorant individuals make much bigger fusses on Twitter (and everywhere else for that matter). In that hypothetical scenario, who am I to stop you, other than making a judgement call as to whether you're worth my time in attempting to educate yourself on the matter of basic social skills?

But does that still work? Can you fairly compare social ineptitude to ignorance about what people may or may not believe to be an IED based on, ostensibly, your ethnicity, as opposed to the actual function of a certain device?

[Feoric]

At 11/28/15 09:59 AM, lapis wrote: Again, it's not just about the kid but also his father, but I also don't share the assumption that all 15-year-olds are completely ignorant of the policitcal atmosphere in their country. As an anecdote: when I was 17, after we had taken our national exams, me and a friend registered complaints about the level of the exams with the national high schools students' union via e-mail specifically because we had heard that the marking severity in the past had been impacted by the amount of complaints from students. I guess we should agree to disagree regarding the plausibility of provocation, but I want to state for the record that I don't believe there's some moment between 15 and 17 where you abrubtly turn into a jaded and cynical misanthrope.

I think a notion that is at least not uncommon in Europe is that the refugees have no affinity with our values and system and lack the will to genuinely exert themselves to help the collective, but that they come specifically because they feel entitled to the money and the relatively generous Western welfare system in particular (the popular Dutch right-wing blog GeenStijl often uses the term 'gelukszoekers', fortune seekers, instead of asylum seekers). The 15 million dollar lawsuit and the refusal to so much as consider the school's security concerns aren't exactly helping to dispel that line of thought.

I don't make the assumption that all 15-year-olds are completely ignorant of the political atmosphere in their country just like I don't make the assumption that all 15-year-olds aren't completely ignorant of the political atmosphere in their country. It's one thing to be aware of a given set of circumstances, and it's another to take advantage and exploit those circumstances for personal gain. You can make the case that the 15 million dollar lawsuit is an example of that but, again, it's also entirely possible a shrewd lawyer looking for name recognition and a large slice of the pie is taking advantage of the family just like nearly everyone else involved.

Imagine if I genuinely had been ignorant of the woman feeling uncomfortable due to me tailgating her. Even then, the onus on social media would be thought to be on me to apologise for being ignorant and not on her for feeling intimidated.

Right, but that feeling of intimidation stems from a lot of precedent of women being attacked in deserted parks at night, and other things which have happened less specifically at deserted parks at night. In that sense, the feeling of intimidation is justified and reinforced by many clear and obvious examples of prior incidents. I'm not convinced that there's the same level of ambiguity (or lack thereof) with the Ahmed case, because as far as I know there are zero examples of teenage kids bringing IEDs to school without making malicious intent extremely obvious from the getgo (for example, the Columbine shooters did have IEDs, but obviously they weren't showing it off to their teacher only to be detained by the police).

It was believed to be an IED because it looked like an IED. Seriously, if he had handcrafted a mock AK47 that could also be used as a cheese grater and the school had called security then you could use the same argument.

If I, as a student, had a cut-out of a Kalashnikov in the form of a cheese grater (which sounds awesome and I want one) and the school called security and went on lockdown specifically because they thought the cheese grater was a real gun, in addition to me being detained by the police and denied my phone call, I think a lot of people would criticize the reaction as being a bit over the top considering the circumstance, as they did with Ahmed's situation. Maybe my mental construct of that hypothetical (specifically what the cheese grater looks like) is different than yours.

I feel that, for the record, I should make the point that I don't actually think the school did anything wrong. We can call into question as to why the teacher would think Ahmed's pencil box clock was a bomb all day long, but at the end of the day the school's administration has a zero tolerance policy for things that are suspicious. So, the teacher's motives or reasoning behind the belief that the clock could plausibly be an IED (i.e; actual knowledge about that sort of thing or outright discrimination) is, in my view, irrelevant, because no rights were being violated up to that point in light of the official policy being carried out. The school officials are in charge of executing the rules and policies, and if a school official believes a thing to be suspicious, then that's that. Things get a little iffy for me when the police got involved. Things get iffier still when you see the sort of rhetoric the "anti-Ahmed" crowd uses.