Fourteen-year-old Ahmed Mohamed was placed in handcuffs and interrogated by police for hours, after he brought a digital clock he built as a project to school. Administrators at the school suspected it was a bomb.
Mohamed’s story, first published in the Dallas Morning News, has unleashed a tidal wave of support online. Using the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed, supporters are posting photos of themselves with clocks.
Brought my clock to work today. #IStandWithAhmed #Solidarity pic.twitter.com/h4Jr0siF1A
— Simran Jeet Singh (@SikhProf) September 16, 2015
Watch out, it's a brown guy with a clock! #IStandWithAhmed @IStandWithAhmed pic.twitter.com/8lzzrEakoi
— Tariq Khokhar (@tkb) September 16, 2015
https://twitter.com/mofathelbab/status/644180183025647616
https://twitter.com/GMSMrsRoss/status/644204789958639616
Twitter summarized the online phenomena:
370K Tweets have expressed #IStandWithAhmed & currently rising at approx 2K Tweets per minutehttp://t.co/XTyvFnJlqr pic.twitter.com/r4Tq8z2jAS
— Twitter Data (@TwitterData) September 16, 2015
The online reaction included tweets from Hillary Clinton and President Obama:
Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great.
— President Obama (@POTUS44) September 16, 2015
Mark Zuckerberg also invited Ahmed to meet him at Facebook.
On Wednesday, police announced that no charges would be filed against Ahmed. Still, Larry Boyd, the police chief for Irving Texas, insisted that the device was a “hoax bomb” and not a clock, as Ahmed maintained. Boyd denied that Ahmed’s skin color was a factor in the police reaction. The case is considered closed.
Ahmed and his family are considering their own legal options and were consulting with an attorney today.