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"There are two ways to think. The first is to trust to your ancestors, your religious leaders, or your charismatic professors. The second is to question, to challenge, to explore history for meanings, and to analyze issues. This latter is called Critical Thinking, and it is this that is the mission of my web site. "

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman  

October 2015

Say Goodbye to Clock Boy!


From the moment the news swept the nation that a 14-year-old Texas Muslim boy, Ahmed Mohamed, had been arrested in school for bringing a suspicious device, I smelled a rat. On the face of this issue, it seemed that a very nice nerdy kid had assembled a Radio Shack digital clock that he brought to school to "impress his teachers." He did not impress his engineering teacher, nor several others to whom he showed his handiwork, but he did at last find a teacher to frighten, one who reacted when she heard an alarm go off in a briefcase that the boy carried.

School killers had carried weapons in briefcases before! She notified authorities who arrived, and when the boy refused to answer any questions, marched him off in handcuffs. The incident went viral when the father went to the press.

The device was not a bomb, but that was not known ahead of time. Any child bringing a potential weapon to school scares us all today; and if it is a Muslim teen, considering the active campaign of ISIS to recruit on web sites, we have every right to be alarmed. Imagine the furor if a bomb had been detonated by anyone, especially a Muslim kid, and the authorities had neglected to react in time!

Instead of praise for vigilance, the teacher and school were lambasted by all the politically-correct people just thrilled to make a point about Islamophobia. We should not profile, they say. Really? I would like to know why not.

Almost immediately, our President (making a point of tolerance), Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook and other Silicon Valley leaders, and all sorts of Hollywood notables praised this child as exactly what our country needs: smart young nerds with a scientific bent. Scholarships were offered; promised admission to MIT; and an invitation to the White House itself for the youngster. He should have been pretty happy, but his activist father was planning to sue the school anyway for the humiliation his boy suffered.

As always in such cases, it is good to get a little more information. This youngster's father was not just a suburban dad; he was a Muslim activist who had recruited his elder daughter to follow this path, and they were now together creating this perfect agent provocateur caper for their boy.

This family had emigrated from Sudan, a nasty Muslim dictatorship with an unsavory culture. Sudan's Muslim Arab government murders non-Arab Muslims with dark skins (Darfur) and hosts open slave markets. Their president is on a no fly list from the UN because he is a war criminal. Ahmed's father had run for president twice in Sudan but had lost both times. When one loses an election in Sudan, it wise to get out of the country. The Mohamed family did, accepting the kindness of the United States, and they settled in Texas.

Gratitude did not last long. Ahmed's big sister was suspended from school several times for making false bomb threats. But she didn't get the supportive press that Ahmed got. The family played this one better.

He rejected his school's apology. Although other schools offered him admission, he had better things to do first: visit the White House, make the rounds of the Washington elites, and then go to Arabia on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The Hajj had already happened, however, leaving a horde of dead and trampled people in its wake this year. He was lucky to have missed it.

Instead of Mecca, then, the family did a triumphal tour of Sudan, the country from which they had fled, met its criminal president, and then turned up in Qatar, one of the richest of the Persian Gulf sultanates. Qatar offered to school Ahmed and house his family. The Mohameds accepted, without a backward glance at the country that had given them refuge.

"Wow," said Ahmed, Qatar is just like Texas except everyone is Muslim!!"

Bon voyage, Ahmed and family, and please do not come back. We don't need ingrates like you.

671 words

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author of God's Law or Man's Law. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.

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