By Kevin Wilson
Have you ever tried to build a clock?
It’s not as easy as you might think.
Accurate timepieces have been the realm of specialized craftsmen for centuries, relying on complicated mechanisms with all kinds of tiny gears and springs and other things that I can’t even begin to name because I’m not a watchmaker.
The advent of electricity immensely simplified the process, but it’s still no mean feat to do it from scratch. That’s why I was deeply impressed when I read that 14 year old Ahmed Mohamed threw one together.
I was decidedly less impressed with what followed, namely his subsequent arrest as his school lost its goddamn mind and had him arrested for making a bomb.
To be fair, the clock in question looked like something out of a spy movie.
Not a bomb. I repeat, not a bomb.
That’s some straight up Mission Impossible shit right there. Seriously, that’s cool as hell. Most 14 year olds are more worried about acne and trying to make sure their parents don’t find out just how much porn they watch, and Ahmed went and built himself a badass science project.
And then he got arrested for it.
What the fuck, over?
I’m sure the school district and the police department thought they were acting in everyone’s best interest by making sure the kid with the scary name wasn’t actually about to Aloha Snackbar them all into a crater, but did no one stop for a second to think?
It’s a science project made by a brilliant kid. Any idiot can look at it and tell you it’s not a damned bomb. Hell, it’s a lot easier to make a bomb than a clock. The police department tried to cover their asses by saying it was a “hoax bomb”, but c’mon. You’re not kidding anyone, Irving PD.
That part has been covered to hell and back, so I’m not gonna get any deeper than I have to, but there are a couple of things I want to address.
For starters, the outpouring of support for Ahmed is kinda touching. Everyone from Silicon Valley big shots like Mark Zuckerberg to President Obama have offered their support. Whatever else has happened, there’s a very good chance he’ll have a bright career ahead of him, so long as he doesn’t lose his creative drive after this incident.
What’s not so cool is the heaping helping of Texas hate that’s been spilling out all over social media. A few people overreact, and suddenly all 26.96 million people in Texas are backwards rednecks, Islamophobes, technophobes, so on and so forth.
Irony, thy name is social media.
This whole incident started because a few idiots decided that Muslim plus clock equals OH MY GOD WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE! If anything, Ahmed’s story should be a cautionary tale about the dangers of making assumptions and stereotyping. Instead, the internet decided that stereotyping was jolly good fun, so long as you choose an acceptable target.
Texas is a massive, massively diverse state. Sure, there are plenty of folks who fall under the backwards redneck banner. I’m sure there are no shortage of folks who read this story and thought the administration and police acted in a perfectly reasonable manner, and probably think that Ahmed got off lightly. These are the same folks who would love to see all Muslims rounded up and put into camps, or better yet, sent back to the Middle East.
They, however, do not make up all of Texas. 
And yet, it’s perfectly okay to assume that every single person in that massive, funny-shaped state on the border with Mexico is a bigot according to the same folks who, in the same breath, will patronizingly remind us all that not all Muslims are potential suicide bombers, proving once and for all that the moral high ground can be ceded by a lack of self awareness.
If you’re going to make fun of the teachers and police that put a 14 year old in handcuffs over a science project, I’m with you there. They deserve to be ridiculed until the end of time. Their massive overreaction has pretty much ensured that Ahmed has a bright future ahead of him, and in 20 years time when he ends up as a keynote speaker at a graduation ceremony in that same school, I’m sure they’re gonna feel awful stupid. How about we all make fun of them, rather than painting the millions of Texans who are just as pissed off about this mess as the rest of us with the same brush?