Muslim student’s treatment highlights racial prejudices
September 18, 2015
You often hear that prejudices are a thing of the past, but they are still showing all around the world to different races and religions. One person who is facing this problem right now is Ahmed Mohamed. Mohamed, a Muslim 14 year old high school student in Texas, brought a clock that he made out of a pencil case to school to show his teacher. Instead of his teacher being impressed over his creation, the teacher thought that it was a bomb. This lead to Mohamed being arrested and suspended from school for three days.
The fact that Mohamed is a Muslim seems to be a very strong catalyst for this event. If Mohamed had been any other race or religion, this event would have most likely not even occurred. Understandably, his school took precaution in investigating a possible bomb threat by alerting the police. Schools must take precaution and follow procedure in every possible threat, but would the teacher even have felt threatened if it weren’t for the Muslim stereotypes that are constantly becoming more and more prominent in today’s society?
Arresting Mohamed went too far. If the police did not have definitive evidence that the clock was a bomb or that he was trying to cause alarm to the school, they had no right to the arrest a 14 year-old boy.
There are also many allegations over the fact that police interrogated the minor without parental consent, which does violate Mohamed’s Miranda rights. Although Mohamed was released from custody, his school still took action by suspending him for three days. There is not a reason for him to be in any kind of trouble because he did nothing wrong.
The whole event seems to be mainly motivated by racial prejudices against Muslims. The school and the police only saw Mohamed as a Muslim and were not even interested to learn that he really just was a kid who loves science and that wants to become an engineer one day. This is sad that people can not see past their prejudices in order to see the real person behind all of the stereotypes.
If I were a member of that school, I would be embarrassed and ashamed of the treatment towards Mohamed. However, the school and community support it. However, the school website is standing behind the way Mohamed was treated saying, “we will always take precautions to protect our students and keep the community safe.”
