Ahmed Mohamed the muslim school boy who was handcuffed bringing a homemade clock to school has received an invitation to the white house from President Barack Obama bringing a homemade clock to school.
Ninth-grade
high school student Ahmed Mohamed from Irving, Texas, was arrested on
Monday after his teachers reported him to the police for making a clock,
which they said resembled a bomb.
The
arrest prompted outrage with thousands expressing their anger at
authorities for arresting a 14-year-old boy over his school project.
Social media users rallied behind the teen using the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed, which has picked up more than 500,000 mentions on Twitter so far, according to analytics site Topsy, and continues to rise rapidly.
Police
have said they will not charge Mohamed but he told reporters on
Wednesday that he remains suspended from school until Thursday.
Many
of the comments cited Mohamed's religious and ethnic background as the
probable cause of his arrest, a viewpoint shared by the largest Muslim
civil advocacy group in the US.
Ibrahim
Hooper, the spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations
(CAIR), told Al Jazeera that it was "obvious" the school boy's religion
had played a role in his arrest.
"We
believe the arrest would not have occurred if the student had not been
Muslim ... the school's reaction and that of the police stems from the
fact that he is a Muslim," Hooper said.
"It is a symptom of growing Islamophobia that a 14-year-old was handcuffed and dragged away for doing a science project."
Obama's open invitation
Astronaut Chris Hadfield, and systems engineer Bobak Ferdowsi who are NASA scientists also gave their backing to Mohamed.
Technology giant Google also weighed in on the issue, inviting Mohamed to a science fair, and asking him to bring his clock.
Many
others on Twitter drew comparisons between how US authorities treated
white people who carried arms and how they treated black youth like
Mohamed, who were involved in benign activities.
One user poked fun at US police for arresting a child for carrying something as harmless as a clock.
Ahmed Mohamed the muslim school boy invited to the white house by Obama
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