musterion
Well-known member
Observing that he made no clock is neither racism nor discrimination, but people like you say that must be at the root of any objection to "his" clock, and he's already savvy enough to begin capitalizing on it.
The Clock Ticks (Ahmed Mohamed's clock bomb)
- Thread starter Desert Reign
- Start date
Observing that he made no clock is neither racism nor discrimination, but people like you say that must be at the root of any objection to "his" clock, and he's already savvy enough to begin capitalizing on it.
I'm commenting on what the kid said, not your criticism of his school work.
The police officers were called in to the situation. They were presented with facts which could have been suspicious. They were/ are not the judge, jury and executioner.
Given today's judgmental demands for political correctness and the fact that no matter what the police officers do, people like you will take issue and make derogatory references to them, I'm thinking they over-reacted. They should not have been called in in the first place! School authorities ought to have the gumption to settle these things internally and immediately. But, they too, are likely terrified of the negative judgments which ensue, by people like you, no matter how they seek to resolve an issue.
And where the rubber meets the road is this, the student disobeyed a directive from his teacher. Why? That is not the issue.
Had he obeyed none of this would have happened.
Now, people of good will might learn from this that this was handled badly and take steps to install a sensible protocol for future reference.
And Granite, who are you to call the officers "Keystone Kops"? How dare you be so snidely cynical!
It is this attitude of yours that galls me. And I shall call you on it every time I see it!
Knight is acting as if his father being an "Islamic activist" is relevant here to how he was treated. I'd like him to clarify why activism is facially suspicious.
musterion
Well-known member
While you can clarify the reasons you know it isn't.
The two brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon were raised by rabidly anti-American parents.
Children tend to hold the same opinions as their parents....
Still, in this case, the school could have handled this themselves internally.
Yet, I was not there so may only surmise.
Which shouldn't have happened.
This time, no. When they kill people with impunity? Oh yeah.
I'm sure cops in Texas have a long history with being politically correct.:chuckle:
Bingo.
So you're saying they were so afraid of looking bad they...called the police?
I'm not sure what specifically you're referring to.
That's debatable. As is the lesson underlying your sentiment: That deference to authority is the solution to problems, even if the authority is in the wrong.
How about "don't be a know-nothing lackwit who calls the cops for no reason"? Seems like a good place to start.
You can trust the cops all you like. I never have and never will.
now that is the kind of respect granite deserves
musterion
Well-known member
Indeed it is...the respect worthy of an insolent, ignorant child.
That isn't how suspicion is supposed to work in this country. You don't have to prove that you're innocent. The government has to prove a valid, individual reason to suspect you. I'd like to know why being two things that are legal and generally fairly benign qualify.
Are you saying that Ahmed Mohamed's parents are "rabidly anti-American"? Do you have any evidence of that?
And yet, they're still legally and morally entitled to an individual judgement.
What do you think the response here would have looked like if the kid's family had been Christian activists. I would guess that it would be quite a bit different.
musterion
Well-known member
Yet here you are suspecting Knight and others of being mere bigots.
And that would have been another issue wouldn't it?
People do tend to react based on the known factors at the time. Sensible people will modify their reactions as the story unfolds.
There were interviews of the parents on TV and they expressed their dislike of America.
Of course each person is accountable for his/her own words and deeds.
The parents I am referencing here are the parents of the Boston Bombers.
The school kid's behavior is not even in the same league and ought not to have reached such notoriety.
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Didn't get much traction the first time, but to recap: Ahmed's father has been branded an "activist" and every hard right site you can find is repeating the phrase. But what's at the heart of it? Has he been marching in a foreign country or in a Sharia Now parade? Well, no. He's Sufi, the sort of Muslim the West typically has been hoping will restrain the radicals, not lead them.
Or, as the Rand Corp. think tank put it: Western governments need to “harness” Sufism, as they are “natural allies" of the West.
The first site I saw use the activist label tried its best to make his defense of the Quran something militant, but really he went to Florida to defend the Islamic Bible against an invitation by a Florida pastor who wanted to put the book and Islam on trial and invited participation by Muslims. Remember the fellow who wanted to burn a few Qurans a while back? Terry Jones? That guy. The Christian "activist" I suppose. :idunno:
He didn't stick around to yell and make good copy or suggest jihad or that the pastor should in any way be harmed. No, he took his family to Disney World.lain: Real militant stuff here.
What else...oh, he put his name in the hat for a foreign office twice. And if you read what was put out in those runs you won't find "Down with the USA!" etc. in any of it.
What you would find (see: Sudan) is a call by the man for suspicious things like, ratifying human rights treaties and abolishing punitive laws for those converting from Islam...FROM Islam.lain:
Here are few extras:
Said Ahmed's father, “Once I realized my dream was bigger than what Sudan had to offer I immigrated to America in the mid-1980’s.” from an article in the North Dallas Gazette.
So when he gets here and his degree in philosophy isn't getting traction he does what? He starts a business selling hotdogs and candy and newspapers in New York. He works. He's not out blaming America for not recognizing his background or running home with his tail between his legs. He's going after the American dream with his bootstraps.
But then...
“I realized this wasn’t enough for me, and I packed my bag and moved to Dallas, Texas y’all,” same article.
Once he made Texas he delivered pizza, drove a taxi and eventually came up with enough to go into business for himself. Exactly what most of us would love to see immigrants do here. Now he has several small businesses. None of them make bombs.
Or, as the Rand Corp. think tank put it: Western governments need to “harness” Sufism, as they are “natural allies" of the West.
The first site I saw use the activist label tried its best to make his defense of the Quran something militant, but really he went to Florida to defend the Islamic Bible against an invitation by a Florida pastor who wanted to put the book and Islam on trial and invited participation by Muslims. Remember the fellow who wanted to burn a few Qurans a while back? Terry Jones? That guy. The Christian "activist" I suppose. :idunno:
He didn't stick around to yell and make good copy or suggest jihad or that the pastor should in any way be harmed. No, he took his family to Disney World.
lain: Real militant stuff here.What else...oh, he put his name in the hat for a foreign office twice. And if you read what was put out in those runs you won't find "Down with the USA!" etc. in any of it.
What you would find (see: Sudan) is a call by the man for suspicious things like, ratifying human rights treaties and abolishing punitive laws for those converting from Islam...FROM Islam.
lain:"Mohamed Elhassen has even tried exporting his peaceful, pro-Western philosophy overseas: He’s run for president of Sudan twice.“
"I hope for my country to become great, and to reestablish good connections with America,” he said in February. Gawker
"I hope for my country to become great, and to reestablish good connections with America,” he said in February. Gawker
Here are few extras:
Said Ahmed's father, “Once I realized my dream was bigger than what Sudan had to offer I immigrated to America in the mid-1980’s.” from an article in the North Dallas Gazette.
So when he gets here and his degree in philosophy isn't getting traction he does what? He starts a business selling hotdogs and candy and newspapers in New York. He works. He's not out blaming America for not recognizing his background or running home with his tail between his legs. He's going after the American dream with his bootstraps.
But then...
“I realized this wasn’t enough for me, and I packed my bag and moved to Dallas, Texas y’all,” same article.
Once he made Texas he delivered pizza, drove a taxi and eventually came up with enough to go into business for himself. Exactly what most of us would love to see immigrants do here. Now he has several small businesses. None of them make bombs.
Didn't get much traction the first time, but to recap: Ahmed's father has been branded an "activist" and every hard right site you can find is repeating the phrase. But what's at the heart of it? Has he been marching in a foreign country or in a Sharia Now parade? Well, no. He's Sufi, the sort of Muslim the West typically has been hoping will restrain the radicals, not lead them.
Or, as the Rand Corp. think tank put it: Western governments need to “harness” Sufism, as they are “natural allies" of the West.
The first site I saw use the activist label tried its best to make his defense of the Quran something militant, but really he went to Florida to defend the Islamic Bible against an invitation by a Florida pastor who wanted to put the book and Islam on trial and invited participation by Muslims. Remember the fellow who wanted to burn a few Qurans a while back? Terry Jones? That guy. The Christian "activist" I suppose. :idunno:
He didn't stick around to yell and make good copy or suggest jihad or that the pastor should in any way be harmed. No, he took his family to Disney World.
What else...oh, he put his name in the hat for a foreign office twice. And if you read what was put out in those runs you won't find "Down with the USA!" etc. in any of it.
What you would find (see: Sudan) is a call by the man for suspicious things like, ratifying human rights treaties and abolishing punitive laws for those converting from Islam...FROM Islam.
"Mohamed Elhassen has even tried exporting his peaceful, pro-Western philosophy overseas: He’s run for president of Sudan twice.“
"I hope for my country to become great, and to reestablish good connections with America,” he said in February. Gawker
Here are few extras:
Said Ahmed's father, “Once I realized my dream was bigger than what Sudan had to offer I immigrated to America in the mid-1980’s.” from an article in the North Dallas Gazette.
So when he gets here and his degree in philosophy isn't getting traction he does what? He starts a business selling hotdogs and candy and newspapers in New York. He works. He's not out blaming America for not recognizing his background or running home with his tail between his legs. He's going after the American dream with his bootstraps.
But then...
“I realized this wasn’t enough for me, and I packed my bag and moved to Dallas, Texas y’all,” same article.
Once he made Texas he delivered pizza, drove a taxi and eventually came up with enough to go into business for himself. Exactly what most of us would love to see immigrants do here. Now he has several small businesses. None of them make bombs.
Good to know. He is not the one who disobeyed a teachers directive
so, for me, he is not the issue.
musterion
Well-known member
The Holy Land Foundation was the biggest Muslim charity in the U.S. Its founders -- immigrants -- are in prison for sending $12 million to Hamas. For years, they were believed to be an upstanding, law-abiding organization.
Back in 2008, two immigrant pizzeria owners in the UK were busted for mixing their own feces into products they sold to kuffars. In the U.S. an immigrant in Dallas was arrested for sprinkling his own dried feces onto several pastries in a store's deli, some of which were eaten by customers.
My point is that not all Muslims can be trusted because many of them hate non-Muslims just for being non-Muslims. And short of them admitting it publicly, we cannot tell which do and which do not.
Your point about Muslim immigrants is...?
People are making him at least a large part of the issue, by inferring nonsense with no background, shading. Because they're Muslims and, hey, you know how those people are. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink, 'nuff said.
lain:As for the kid, he didn't disobey a directive. I don't know why you think that. As someone who is the son of a teacher, who has been and will in relatively short order again be a teacher, that's not what happened.
One teacher told him it wasn't a good idea to carry it around. Again, if the teacher was really worried about it then all that teacher, the adult, the one who stands in loco parentis, who is supposed to have a fully functional prefrontal cortex, all that teacher had to do was confiscate the device and tell Ahmed he could have it back after school.
But he didn't take it. He didn't forbid it (which would have been silly, because if you're at that stage you're at the taking stage) and a fourteen year old boy, left to his own judgment, decided to continue to show it off. About as startling as rain falling from the sky.
The police who arrested him, via their chief, have publicly admitted that they found no reason to believe the boy was trying to perpetrate a bomb hoax and the worst thing the most ardently engaged at making the kid look bad have come up with on the device is that it's a badly redone alarm clock.
So, to recap: no actual forbidding or confiscation by the teachers (because, again, those two things are PBJ), no belief by the police that he attempted a hoax and no bomb.
If that's not a recipe for a national news story, what is...
And Bernie Madoff was a beloved and upstanding member of the financial community once. Sure. People can get scammed.
And a non-immigrant, former member of the armed forces blew up a government building in the heartland.
Sure. But those don't tend to be Sufi and don't tend to have the history and profile of Ahmed's father, who in one failed Sudanese election bid opposed penalties for those converting from Islam, as I noted.
It is reasonable to be concerned about someone acting suspiciously. It's not reasonable to be suspicious of every black person you see because you read crime statistics that show blacks disproportionately commit violent crime. Especially not reasonable if you have background on the man and what you can know is the sort of thing that should satisfy.
Or you can treat every Muslim like a sleeper and every black man like a volcano. But that's not a rational approach.
I don't like broad brushes, so my point has been about the man in front of me. He's no more responsible for any reasonable complaint I might have against Islam than I am for my slavery or Tim McVeigh.