Ahmed Mohamed: Controversial Clockmaker Is Transferring To Another School, Family Says


Ahmed Mohamed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, said Thursday evening that his son will not be returning to MacArthur high school, the Huffington Post reports.

Ahmed Mohamed, 14, was handcuffed and arrested on Monday after school administrators suspected him of bringing a bomb to class. The suspected bomb turned out to be a homemade clock after further investigation by the Texas police. Charges were dropped against Ahmed Mohamed on Wednesday. And now that he has been cleared of any suspicion suggesting terrorist activity, school officials said that they would “certainly welcome” Ahmed back to school.

“We’re confident that we can continue to provide him with an excellent education,” a school spokeswoman told ABC News.

Ahmed’s family, however, said that the controversial freshman is not in the least interested in going back to his public high school. According to his father, Ahmed Mohamed has his eyes set on private or home-schooling options.

The Muslim student’s decision to leave his public school is not in the least surprising given the way his interrogation and arrest was handled by the Texas police. After his homemade clock was taken away from him, the principal brought an officer to have Ahmed cuffed, marched out of school, and then sent to a detention center for questioning.

Mohamed was interrogated by five officers, who kept asking him why he created the bomb, despite repeatedly saying that the device in question was only a clock he made at home. The school’s principal threatened to expel him unless he made a written statement. On Tuesday, a police report was released citing three MacArthur High faculty members as complainants against Mohamed on charges of creating a “hoax bomb.”

Mohamed’s father said that his son was mistreated because of prejudice against Muslims.

“Because his name is Mohamed and because of September 11th,” Mohamed told the Dallas Morning News, “I think my son got mistreated.”

Ahmed Mohamed has recently become a media sensation as people from around the world began to rally in his defense, using both online and traditional media to show their support for him. The hashtag #IStandWithAhmed has become one of Twitter’s top trending topics. Twitter and Reddit offered Ahmed an internship. Google executives invited him to a weekend science fair.

Even U.S. President Barack Obama gave his support by tweeting, “Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.”

And it looks like Ahmed has got it made now that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has joined the fray.

School officials in Irving, a Dallas suburb, expressed their disappointment at many of the comments made on social media. They added that critics would have handled it the same way if they were in the same predicament.

“We’re never going to take chances with student safety,” said Lesley Weaver, a spokeswoman for the Irving Independent School District. “We have an obligation to protect all 2,800 students here at MacArthur.”

Ahmed Mohamed, an avid inventor and robotics enthusiast, said that he won’t stop creating.

“Not my last invention and it wasn’t my first,” he said.

[Photo by Ben Torres/Getty Images]

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