But It Looked Like a Clock ... Oops

President Obama decided to invite to the White House this week a student who was picked up by the police for bringing to school a science project.  While, normally, that would seem to be an innocuous story, this one had taken a rather curious turn.

The student, as we all know, is a Muslim.  The clock, as almost no one knows, was a disassembled clock made by Radio Shack's Micronta subsidiary, and then reassembled by Ahmed Mohamed, the student.  It was reassembled, of course, into a briefcase, which, given the prominence of the printed circuit board, made it look remarkably like a homemade bomb.  Hopefully you have seen the pictures.

The teacher, assuming a 14-year-old shouldn't be expected to build a printed circuit board, got a little panicky, as did the school -- Muslims toting things that look like bombs tend to scare people when Al Qaeda and ISIS are out there recruiting children of all ages to become suicide bombers.  The police were called, and young Ahmed found himself hauled off to jail to protect the students from imminent danger.

Of course, young Ahmed's "crime" seemed to be more one of electronic plagiarism than of imminent terrorism, so he was released on his own recognizance and sent back home.  Obama, seeing an opportunity to make a point about forgiveness for patent infringement (that's it, right?), tweeted out an invitation to young Ahmed to visit the White House and demonstrate his brilliant invention.

And the world was treated to our White House's version of political correctness.

So let's imagine, for a moment, that instead of Ahmed Mohamed having brought the clock to his class to show his amazing ability to deconstruct and reassemble someone else's invention, he had brought it to ... the White House.  Let's say it was on a tour.

Let's see, on the heels of 9-11, Charlie Hebdo, the Boston Marathon, the conference in Dallas, etc., etc., a Muslim kid brings a briefcase full of electronics to the White House.  Barack Obama would welcome him with open arms, give him a big hug, tell him how creative he was, and ...

Oh, give me a break.  The Secret Service would have been all over him from the moment he got within 100 yards of the place, and would have blown the "clock" up into bits.  The kid would have been hauled off to a holding tank and his whole history examined.  And Barack Obama knows this.

Ahmed Mohamed did not cause the attitude that Americans have about the world's Muslim community by himself -- in fact, he obviously really had nothing to do with it.  But he can help fix it.  He's going to the White House?  Great.  Let him ask, before he gets there, for a moment to read a statement.  He needs now to speak up and say this:

"Thank you, Mr. President, but I respectfully decline your offer to come to the White House; I will accept an invitation when I have earned it, not when I am just a symbol of something and not deserving of honor.

"Rather, I would like to use this message and this 15-minute bully pulpit to say this to the Muslim community across the world -- I went to jail not for my sins but yours.  I went to jail because your actions have made all followers of Allah suspect and deemed to be terrorists before the fact.  So I ask you to put down your 7th Century attitudes and your weapons, lay down your arms and embrace Christians, Jews, Buddhists and followers of every other faith as fellow children of God in His many names."
 
Some time ago, I wrote a piece asking the USA's most famous Muslim -- Muhammad Ali -- to seize the day, stand up and condemn the violence by the world's Islamic terrorists.  No other Muslim carried the position that Ali has.  Somehow, we have not seen the old guy get up and say anything.  Imagine that.

But young Ahmed, well, he has the chance.  And if his words stop one other Muslim kid in the USA from turning terrorist, cause one Muslim American to embrace his fellow American despite his Christianity or Judaism or Buddhism -- or, better, because of it -- it will be a better world.

Then he needs to learn to build his own inventions.

Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
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