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Muslims consistently play the West like a fiddle, and we never learn.

I even kind of fell for it. But it turns out that the clock Ahmed Mohamed brought to school was not his creation, and it was more than likely meaningfully provocative in order to get a reaction. And a reaction he got (both negative from the police, and then extremely positive from much of the populace who heard about the first reaction). Ahmed Mohamed was most likely the pawn (being told what to do and fed lines to say in at least one phone interview), but someone behind this kid is a very smart fellow, at least when it comes to getting money and attention.  Name one other person who got handcuffed and went to the police station for a few hours before being sent home with no charges filed and within a day or so got invitations to visit from people such as President Obama and Mark Zuckerberg, an internship offer from Twitter, and a campaign started to raise $100,000 for tuition.  And ironically, this charade gave people the opinion that the US is the most bigoted country in the world while at the same time the people of this nation poured out their hearts and gave generously in support of this boy, making him and his family famous and probably rich, too.

At least some of this praise and attention might have been warranted, if Ahmed had built anything instead of merely removing the case from a 1980s mass-produced alarm clock and transferring its contents into a sinister-looking "suitcase-style" pencil case...and he had not taken his invention to every single class and had it make a beeping sound.

I think the first 25 seconds of this clip from Real Time with Bill Maher sums up my feelings about Ahmed's clock.  Those first 25 seconds are really a must-watch.  I honestly laughed out loud.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGit-XltUB4

So what is the takeaway from all of this?
  • Ahmed didn't build a clock, but rather removed the case of an alarm clock and put it into a suitcase-looking pencil case.
  • Ahmed took this to every class and had it make a beeping noise during class.
  • Ahmed spent a few hours at a police station, without any charges pressed.  Then, he was released.
  • The support of millions of Americans, including the president and major heads of tech companies makes Ahmed's family rich and popular, but ingeniously at the same time allows Muslims to continue to claim that America is particularly bigoted against them.

For an article describing this topic in more detail, please read this:
http://blogs.artvoice.com/techvoice/2015/09/17/reverse-engineering-ahmed-mohameds-clock-and-ourselves/

"Ahmed Mohamed didn’t invent his own alarm clock. He didn’t even build a clock."

"It only took a minute to locate Ahmed’s clock. See this eBay listing, up at the time of this writing. Amhed’s clock was invented, and built, by Micronta, a Radio Shack subsidary. Catalog number 63 756."

"Ahmed Mohamad did not invent, nor build a clock. He took apart an existing clock, and transplanted the guts into a pencil box, and claimed it was his own creation. It all seems really fishy to me."

"If we accept the story about “inventing” an alarm clock is made up, as I think I’ve made a pretty good case for, it’s fair to wonder what other parts of the story might be made up, not reported factually by the media, or at least, exaggerated."

"If we stop and think – was it really such a ridiculous reaction from the teacher and the police in the first place? How many school shootings and incidents of violence have we had, where we hear afterwards “this could have been prevented, if only we paid more attention to the signs!” Teachers are taught to be suspicious and vigilant. Ahmed wasn’t accused of making a bomb – he was accused of making a look-alike, a hoax. And be honest with yourself, a big red digital display with a bunch of loose wires in a brief-case looking box is awful like a Hollywood-style representation of a bomb. Everyone jumped to play the race and religion cards and try and paint the teachers and police as idiots and bigots, but in my mind, they were probably acting responsibly and erring on the side of caution to protect the rest of their students, just in case. “This wouldn’t have happened if Ahmed were white,” they say. We’re supposed to be sensitive to school violence, but apparently religious and racial sensitivity trumps that. At least we have another clue about how the sensitivity and moral outrage pecking order lies."
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