Ahmad– The teenager who was the reason behind a hashtag
That was a normal day. Everything was going calm. But then they found him. They found Ahmed Mohamed suspected of a hoax bomb. One of the officer said ‘That’s who I thought he was’. It was just an invention. He never tried to fear them, fear them of anything.
Ahmed is a teenager from Texas [U.S] and that he has some prime in his brain, he started to work on one. He was inventing a digital clock which actually he invented and showed to his teacher in school. Ahmad’s engineering teacher said the clock was “nice” but advised him against showing anyone.
It was then impounded during his English lesson because the alarm kept beeping. Later that day, he was taken out of his class by the principal and questioned by five police officers before being taken to a juvenile detention centre where he’d his fingerprints taken. Mohamed, from the ninth grade, was suspended from school.
The moment Ahmed got arrested, a hashtag ‘#IStandWithAhmed’ started doing the rounds on Twitter, which consumed hundreds of thousands of supportive tweets. The message was so presto that it went to space and time. Both Barrack Obama and Charles Bolden invited Ahmed for some good talk and future investment.
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.
— President Obama (@POTUS) September 16, 2015
After initial probe and huge public support, Ahmed was freed without any charge. In an interview to Al-Jazeera, Ahmed thanked Obama, NASA scientists and Mark Zukerberg for being supportive. He said, the teachers thought of a digital clock a hoax bomb because he is Muslim. “There is a lot of stereotypes for people who are foreigners and they’ve…names mainly in Islam,” Mohamed says.
Mohamed also says the flood of support he has received shows that people care. “Not just because I’m a Muslim boy. For every person who’s different,” Mohamed says. “It’s not just Muslims who go through this…We’re all human in the end.”
The case sparked debates on racial profiling and Islamophobia with Mohamed getting support from many sources. The arrest has been widely criticised, with top US scientists telling Ahmed not to lose his passion for invention. Ahmed says: ‘He is ready and happy to go to White House and meet Barrack Obama.’
While writing about Ahmed, there came news of LoC killings, three Pakistani civilians were killed and three others wounded on Thursday in what officials said was fierce shelling by Indian troops from across the Line of Control. The other news was of a terrorist attack in PAF camp at Inqalab road in Peshawar’s Badaber area, taking atleast 42 lives including 13 terrorists according to ISPR.
These types of cases such as Ahmad’s can arise among us in the society, from time to time. However, I also realized that both India and Pakistan treat each other like Ahmad- we’re concerned about each other’s hoax bombs.
A war strategy without civilian input/leadership is made to fail. And we’re witnessing it for decades.