For a period of about 24 hours Ahmed Mohamed was a genuine feel-good story, the story of the Internet coming together to help a 14-year-old black Muslim kid who’d been wrongfully arrested for a homemade clock that supposedly looked like a bomb.
But it’s the Internet and the news cycle moves fast–I predicted at the time that the success of Ahmed’s viral story would have its own built-in backlash, as all viral stories do, and that reactionaries trying to discredit him wouldn’t be far away.
And sure enough, within a few days the Internet delivered.
I’m not that concerned by the genuinely deranged people out to make Ahmed into a monster or a terrorist, to claim that all Islamophobia is ultimately justified. Their narrative isn’t going to get much traction.
What I’m concerned by is the supposed well-meaning liberals like Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins chiding us that this case just doesn’t matter that much, telling us we’re becoming overly emotional about it. Maher telling us to “have a little perspective,” saying the actions of Ahmed’s teacher who had him arrested were understandable. Dawkins calling Ahmed a “fraud” because his clock wasn’t built entirely from scratch like some people thought it was, and calling showing the clock to his teacher a “silly prank.”
Both men, of course, aver that it was wrong to handcuff a child and drag him out of school in front of his classmates. But they say that a simple apology to Ahmed for his inconvenience ought to be enough. Why, they ask, must this boy be invited to the White House? Why must he get invited to tours of the campus of MIT, Facebook, Twitter? Why must Microsoft send him a hardware kit, and everyone send him positive and encouraging messages?