Muslim boy who got arrested for making homemade clock, sues Texas school district
Tuesday, August 9th, 2016 1:15:02 by fatimaarshad
When a Muslim boy got punished for making a homemade clock and taking it to school by being arrested, his whole life changed and now he is suing the Texas school district to pay the price for that.
Ahmed Mohamed was just 14-years-old when he made a clock by himself and took it to school to show it off. However, instead of being appreciated for it, he got arrested as people thought that he had made a bomb. Now Ahmed’s father had filed a lawsuit in federal court on his behalf, claiming that the Irving Independent School District and the city west of Dallas has discriminated against the teen because of his religion. The lawsuit claims that the only reason Ahmed got arrested was, that he was a Muslim and people thought he is making a bomb.
The school district has denied violating Ahmed’s rights as a student and said that no other details could be provided at the moment since this was an ongoing litigation.
So far the family has asked for $15 million for the city of Irving and the school district. “The only way to get justice is through money,” Mohamed told a news conference in Texas on Monday.
The incident took place in 2015, when Ahmed was a 14-year-old ninth-grader who ventured into robotics and would regularly build something from scratch. As pictures of Ahmed wearing a NASA t-shirt and handcuffed, hit the internet, a social media storm ignited with the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed trended globally, and the teenager was praised by Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, who said: “Having the skill and ambition to build something cool should lead to applause, not arrest.”
A few months after the incident Ahmed got a scholarship from Qatar and him and his family moved there as he was facing death threats in the US.
“I lost my home, I lost my creativity. I used to love building things but now I can’t,” he said at the news conference. “I’ve lost my security.”
Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=53818
Posted by fatimaarshad
on Aug 9 2016. Filed under Pakistan.
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