School's Out As 'Clock Boy' Speaks Of Ordeal

[naz]

The Texas teen who was arrested for bringing a a homemade clock to school gets invited to intern at Twitter's HQ.



A Muslim boy who was detained by police for taking a homemade clock into school that was mistaken for a bomb will not be returning to class.Ahmed Mohamed was led away in handcuffs at Irving MacArthur High School in north Texas after he showed the device to his teachers.The 14-year-old is still suspended from the school, but his father Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed said they will look for private or home-schooling options rather than going back.Despite a nationwide backlash, school authorities have defended the decision to remove Ahmed from class.

In an interview with TV station WFAA, he said: "I feel like everything is a better place now, since some of the racial discrimination has stopped. It should be 0% racial discrimination and 100% success rate."Before I was really scared that no one was going to care about me because I'm a Muslim. I felt like I was singled out."And now everyone wants to interview me because of what happened and I can reassure you in the interviews I will make sure this never happens to another child and globally ever again."It made me feel like I had the power to fight back for others who couldn't fight for themselves."



Ahmed, the son of Sudanese immigrants, brought the homework project to impress his engineering teacher on Monday.But when the digital clock beeped later during an English class, the teacher confiscated it claiming it looked like a bomb.Ahmed was taken to Irving police headquarters to be questioned, fingerprinted and photographed, but no charges were filed.Twitter, where the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed has trended all week, offered the boy an internship on Thursday.It tweeted: "Hi @IStandWithAhmed, we (heart) building things at @twitter too. Would you consider interning with us? We'd love it - DM us! #IStandWithAhmed."The ninth grader has also been invited to the White House by US President Barack Obama to attend an astronomy night for top scientists.Bristol Palin, the daughter of former US vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, criticised the invite."This encourages more racial strife that is already going on with the 'Black Lives Matter' crowd and encourages victimhood," she wrote in her blog on Thursday.Ahmed has also won invites to Facebook’s HQ, Google’s science fair and praised from a top NASA engineer.