MIT Students Hang Clock in Support of Muslim Texas Teenager

To support Ahmed Mohamed, the Muslim high schooler who found controversy when he brought a purportedly homemade clock to his Texas high school, students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hung a clock of their own in the school’s entrance.

The MIT students created a makeshift digital clock festooned with a banner sporting the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed. They then hung the device over the railing of the balcony in the school’s entrance.

Later that day, school administrators dutifully took the unauthorized display down.

Such displays are common at MIT. Students routinely hang banners, posters, and other displays in order to support one cause or another and the administration just as routinely takes them down.

But this isn’t the first time that someone at MIT has spoken up in support of the Muslim kid at the center of the “clock” controversy in Texas.

Several days ago MIT astrophysics postdoctoral fellow Chanda Prescod-Weinstein invited Ahmed Mohamed to tour the university after reaching out to the teen on Twitter.

All of this support from MIT for the Texas teen comes after his claims that he is interested in engineering and would like to become a student at the famed university after he graduates high school.

For many, though, the incident brings more questions than answers. As those left of center rush to Ahmed Mohamed’s side over his claims to being religiously profiled by the Irving, Texas police, others feel that the whole incident just doesn’t add up.

The claim that the Irving police were out of line seems more like activism than fact. There is no evidence that the police did anything out of the ordinary based on the situation and the laws and statutes that were invoked.

Others wonder if the incident is a setup because the teen’s father is a Muslim activist who has been trying to make a name for himself in the grievance industry.

Still others note that the “clock” the teen claimed he “invented” does not resemble much of an “invention.” An engineer who looked at the photos of the device and reported that Ahmed Mohamed’s device was no “invented clock” but just an old clock that was disassembled and suspiciously stuffed into a metal pencil case.

The case also sparked the ire of conservative 13-year-old C.J. Pearson who, in a viral video, criticized President Obama for falling all over himself to invite Mohamed to the White House while at the same time ignoring the death of Kate Steinle and a growing list of murdered police officers, none of whose family members have been invited to the White House.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com