Way back in the beginning of September, the media, and in particular STEM-obsessed, politically correct digital outlets, were abuzz with the story of a young Muslim “inventor” falling afoul of school authorities in the suburbs of Dallas, possibly owing to a zero-tolerance policy run amok, possibly because of ethnic profiling. Some of the facts are fairly straightforward: Fourteen-year-old Ahmed Mohamed brought to school a clock he had assembled at home. A teacher who saw his small ticking box of wires suspected it could be a bomb, or maybe thought it was just meant to look like one, and the police were summoned.
Before you could say photo-op, Ahmed had been invited to the White House, was deluged with donations to a scholarship fund, and received a host of internship offers from top tech firms, all interested in supporting another young inventive mind.
Never mind that, as skeptics pointed out, the device was simply the inner workings of a 1970s-vintage digital clock, removed from their outer shell and transplanted into a pencil case. Enterprise is enterprise, after all.
Since then, the story has taken a strange turn or two. Before shaking hands with President Obama, Ahmed and his family were the guests in Khartoum of the genocidal war criminal and president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir (the father is Sudanese by birth). And it seems that the offers from American firms weren’t quite sweet enough. The Mohamed family is moving to Qatar, where Ahmed will be able to take advantage of a unique educational opportunity in the Gulf state.
“I was really impressed with everything that Qatar Foundation has to offer and the campuses are really cool,” Ahmed said in a statement. “I got to meet other kids who are also really interested in science and technology. I think I will learn a lot and also have lots of fun there.” His family says that he was the recipient of a scholarship from the “Young Innovators Program.”
Texas papers report the Mohamed family is very excited about the possibilities of life in the Middle East. “Looking at all the great offers we’ve had, it’s the best decision,” said Eyman Mohamed, Ahmed’s 18-year-old sister. “They even have Texas A&M at Qatar. . . . It’s basically like America.”
Basically like America? While Eyman and Ahmed’s father has railed against the Islamophobia of Texas, the country the family is moving to has a human rights record described by Human Rights Watch as “problematic” with a “poor record on freedom of expression [that has] declined further.” In any event, the American chapter of this strange saga has come to an end, but The Scrapbook suspects that there is more to this story than meets the eye.
