The father of Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old Muslim-American student better known as “clock boy” for the September 2015 incident in which he was arrested in school for making a clock that looked like a bomb, is now suing the school at which his son was arrested.
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According to the lawsuit, Ahmed Mohamed, and his family were simply trying to live the “American Dream”. As our friends at Powerline have shown in their excellent coverage of the story, it’s pretty clear that Ahmed’s clock was created to look and sound just like what the boy’s teacher and the Irving, Texas police department believed it was-a bomb.
The incident prompted outrage from some who claimed Mohamed was profiled for being a Muslim and wrongfully arrested by police and suspended by MacArthur High School for a simple misunderstanding.
The law firm representing the 14-year-old stated that they have sent letters requesting $10 million from the city of Irving and $5 million from the Irving Independent School District over the incident.
The suit goes on to say that Texas has a “history of discrimination against Muslims” in its curriculum and schools while citing that the Irving school district overseeing Ahmed’s former school is under a Justice Department investigation “regarding its pattern of discrimination”.
Ahmed and his parents moved to Qatar last fall after he accepted a scholarship there, but the family returned to Texas in June.
Now Ahmed’s father had filed a lawsuit in federal court on his behalf, claiming that the Irving Independent School District and the city west of Dallas has discriminated against the teen because of his religion. Here’s what to know about his story so far. Both Ahmed and his Sudanese immigrant father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamad, are USA citizens, the lawsuit notes.
Irving ISD and city officials have not yet commented on the suit.
“I got a lot of hate”.
“These acts by the authorities show blatant disregard for the civil rights of this American”, according to Mohamed’s lawyer, Susan Hutchison, KTVT-TV reported.
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The lawsuit accuses the school district of having a “long and ugly history of race struggles” and says the state of Texas and the school district “have a history of discrimination against Muslims”. Ahmed Mohamed discussed his new life in an interview with the Washington Post. My dad doesn’t have a job anymore. I moved from my house to an apartment. I’d just build things. “I used to love building things but now I can’t”, he said at the news conference.
