Just to put this all into context, we have MULTIPLE, legitimate presidential candidates saying that there should never be a Muslim president and that Muslims (not even qualifying it with “extremists”) are the biggest threat to the U.S…
But no, several people are right, the fact that this child is dark-skinned Muslim I’m sure has absolutely, 100% nothing to do with how people reacted. I’m positive a white, Christian kid would’ve had the same treatment. 8-|
As someone else said upthread- this is how we radicalize people in the US. When you’re taught from a young age that everything you do is suspicious and that you’re a lesser citizen (if one at all), you don’t get the idea that you’re supposed to change to “fit in,” but rather you can very easily become bitter and resentful.
Yep, I agree, when you treat people as suspects, when you treat them as outsiders, etc, this is what happens.One of the reasons we have had relatively little problems with Muslims, as opposed to let’s say Britain and France, is that because of the nature of this country, where we are a country of immigrants for the most part, their experience is not the same, not by a long shot. But every time something like this happens you are sending a message, not the one Harvestmoon1 claimed, but a bad one, that you aren’t one of us, you are other, you are not to be trusted, and it gives a potent weapon to the radicals, who will tell the kid “see, they hate Muslims, they hate you, only if we fight back, if we bring them terror, will they stop treating muslims like they do”. I don’t think that if the kid had been suspended it would have been as big a deal, it would have probably gone along more with stupid schools overreacting, like the kid with the gun shaped pop tart, but when they had the kid arrested and dragged out in handcuffs like that, in front of everyone,that is beyond the pale. Put it this way, I have seen news footage of when they arrest some kid who brought guns to school and planned to shoot people, and the cops made it a point to hide the kids head, they try and get them out through a side entrance or back entrance, and not in view of the other students. Compare that to the way the cops handled this one, literally a walk of shame if the descriptions I have read are true.
The kid is very bright but not all that naive. He was naive enough to think his clock would be seen as geeky cool and not a bomb. He was not so naive as to not know he was being “otherized” when the cop said, “that’s who I thought it was.” He was not so naive as to trust that the school didn’t go overboard just because of his race and religion.
He may not be a genius inventor but his penchant for tinkering shouldn’t be stifled by people in authority who won’t use common sense and common decency to treat every kid with the same deference for their age and maturity. He is not asking for special treatment. He wants to get the same benefit of the doubt as every other kid. I hope he can get into a prep or stem magnet school where he can tinker to his heart’s content.
Zero tolerance is like mandatory minimum sentences - it’s lazy and draconian. There is no substitute for sound judgment. Sound judgment was sorely lacking here too.
Could you please explain to me how this example pertains to that of a 14-yr-old in Texas? Can you explain why you selected THIS example of a person driving on the sidewalk?
Also, this article shows that this particular school district and region has had a long history of being punitive with students and having racial tensions between a White dominated local elite and an increasingly growing minority population. :
Oh yeah, this is how WE are radicalizing people. It doesn’t have a thing to do with an extreme view of Islam, enticing recruiting techniques, and radical clerics. It’s US, we’re just not nice enough. If only we had treated people with enough respect, there would have been no 9/11, no ISIS. Hey, I wonder how all those Islamic extremists have ended up in the Middle East, when most of them have never even been in the US? There must be some way that it’s our fault they are killing fellow Muslims and other people who live in their own country. Gosh, if we could just send them more money, show them that we respect them, I’m sure they’d stop massacring people. And if the Boston bombers were treated a little nicer, they wouldn’t have been radicalized, right? Though the taxpayers supported their families, and by all accounts they were well liked, popular young men, there’s got to be something that WE did to radicalize them. Nothing to do with their parents, mosque leaders, and foreign training.
Hey, I wonder how it is that we radicalized all those young white men that keep shooting up schools, movie theatres, wherever? That must be OUR fault too. No wait, must be someone else’s fault, they’re white guys.
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It’s US, we’re just not nice enough. If only we had treated people with enough respect, there would have been no 9/11, no ISIS. Hey, I wonder how all those Islamic extremists have ended up in the Middle East, when most of them have never even been in the US? There must be some way that it’s our fault they are killing fellow Muslims and other people who live in their own country. Gosh, if we could just send them more money, show them that we respect them, I’m sure they’d stop massacring people. And if the Boston bombers were treated a little nicer, they wouldn’t have been radicalized, right? Though the taxpayers supported their families, and by all accounts they were well liked, popular young men, there’s got to be something that WE did to radicalize them. Nothing to do with their parents, mosque leaders, and foreign training.
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@musicprnt It is apparent that we approach this incident from different perspectives. You believe it was motivated by Ahmed’s ethnicity or religion and I don’t see it that way. My contention that Ahmed was arrested and questioned in order to determine if he violated the Texas statute prohibiting hoax bombs was confirmed by Police Chief Boyd in his interview on CNN. The fact that you heard that same contention on “right wing talk radio” and Fox news is not relevant to me. I have no party affiliation and do not watch Fox News - my views are my own.
I have no reason to jump on any particular band wagon and I do not have any personal or family connections to law enforcement or educators. I am a mother however, and still drop one of my children every morning at a high school and have another living on a college campus. If I have any bias whatsoever, it comes from my desire that their personal safety is not put at risk by the violence that permeates our schools. While the way this matter unfolded was unfortunate, there are policies and protocols in place at schools that are there for good reason. There were 2 resource officers at that high school that thought it advisable to bring in outside law enforcement. I have no knowledge of what went into that decision but neither does anyone else opining here.
Yes, I do think the fact that Ahmed was a new freshman added to the the way this played out. Perhaps if teachers and administrators had known more about him and his interests, had seen his creations at the school science fair or witnessed him bringing something in to show them before, the whole thing would have raised less suspicion. Perhaps in that case the school resource officers would have made the decision to handle the matter internally.
I do not believe that complacency will keep our schools safe. And I am in agreement with the Police Chief’s statement that “this nation has seen horrific things and it is better to err on the side of caution.” My mention of Timothy McVeigh et al was in response to your:
A statement that I found inflammatory and an attempt to attribute to me some sort of ethnic or religious bias. I can speak for myself and as I have said repeatedly, I do not approach this from that perspective. There are plenty of examples of non-muslim students being suspended or expelled under similar circumstances and plenty of examples of non-muslims blowing up people and places.
The bottom line is that law enforcement is responsible for the safety and well being of the students and faculty at our schools. Quite a challenge in today’s environment of violence. I think their job is like being “a bubble in a briar patch” - they are damned if they do and damed if they don’t.
@busdriver11, there’s the radicalization in Islamic societies, and the radicalization of people who grew up in Western secular societies. If we want more of the latter, encouraging young men to feel alienated from Western societies is a good way to go. There are enough fanatics trying to enlist them as it is. Making it easy for them is not productive.
It may surprise you to learn that I am no way, no how a fan of Islam. Islam was, let’s face it, spread by the sword. (And don’t anyone start telling me that Christianity was too, because A) I am not a Christian and not an apologist for Christianity, and B) At least in the case of Christians to do so flies directly in the face of everything we know about the teachings of the man they claim to worship. Not so with Islam) When I see women in headscarves and other coverings, it disgusts and angers me. I am firmly committed to the separation of church and state, and Islam is in complete conflict with that. I find things like people rioting and killing each other because they heard that someone burned a Koran unspeakable. And so forth.
BUT the foreign policy of the US and many other Western nations which has for decades consisted of supporting brutal dictators because they “opposed Communism” has left the Middle East in a situation where there is virtually no political alternative to dictatorship but the Islamists. There is no moderate alternative. Our pals the dictators obliterated them, and we did nothing to stop them. So yes, to some degree, we created the situation. (I won’t even get into the Israel question, since that is a nuclear topic.)
Let’s examine the history to see some of the historical roots for the radicalization and resentment of the West and specifically the US:
Western European colonialism of Middle East and North Africa from the early 19th century till the 20th century and by some definitions…till the very present.*
The British/French post WWI partitioning and drawing up artificial borders without accounting for local regional and group factors creating nations like Iraq. It’s a key factor in why there’s simmering tensions between Shiite majority and Sunni minority groups within Iraq and it’s still affecting the region to this very day. While the US wasn’t a central player here, they did give the British/French their implicit blessing by allowing it to proceed despite the fact the US had a lot of diplomatic and military leverage in the period.
The decades long continual US support for the Saudi Arabian monarchy which has not only ruled autocratically, but has maintained its power by pairing up and making the Wahabi sect of Sunni Islam the final authorities on religious matters within their society.
The historical diplomatic, political, and military support for Israel since 1948 which is viewed by many Arab and other non-Jewish groups in the Middle East as a western neo-colonialist land grab and even a form of ethnic cleansing(“Right of Return” issue originates from Palestinian families/groups being forced out of their homes/having property confiscated). This has been made worse by what is perceived as uncritical US support for Israeli actions and positions in the UN and in general while downplaying or ignoring the Palestinian issue even when most of the world viewed them and the ignoring of that issue as outrageous.
This isn’t only restricted to Muslims, either as many Arabs who were active in more secular Arab nationalist and terrorist groups had Christian or atheist backgrounds in the Marxist-Leninist mode. The anger has only worsened with each defeat and each additional provision of US aid in the military, financial, political, and diplomatic contexts.
In 1953, the CIA sponsored a coup to overthrow a democratically elected prime minister and his government because the government and prime minister were labeled “Communists” for nationalizing the Anglo-American Oil interests in response to the latter’s refusal to change what were essentially exceedingly exploitative colonialist-type contracts which granted massive profits to the latter while granting a relative pittance for the resources extracted. In the process, they ended up restoring a highly autocratic monarch which angered many Iranians not only for the hypocrisy of overthrowing the government most of them elected democratically, but also because said monarch was viewed as highly corrupt and out of touch with most of the people.
Things came to a head in 1979 when the monarchy was effectively forced out by a coalition of dissident groups. Unfortunately, Khomeni and his fellow theocracy inclined supporters managed to politically outmanuever the democratically oriented dissidents and interim government partially by effectively tying the West and the US with the highly unpopular Palavi monarchy.
US support for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and religiously conservative autocratic Gulf monarchies…especially Saudi Arabia during the '80s not only due to Cold War factors, but also to fight Khomeni’s regime. Simultaneously, Reagan’s administration also supplied weapons to the Iranians as part of the infamous Iran-Contra scandal in a hostage negotiation deal which provided additional examples of US hypocrisy…that and Ollie North who is ironically now a pundit who loves to lecture others on morality.
US military, financial, and moral support for highly radical Islamic groups in the '80s fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. This includes folks like Osama Bin Laden.
and probably more I’m missing.
Incidentally, the origin of the French Foreign Legion in 1831 was a means for the French government to get poverty and/or crime inclined foreigners in France off French soil while creating a ready military force to invade and colonize North Africa.
What you wrote above is a literal fabrication. Kindly reference the post of mine in this thread where I use the words to set an example to “them”. The only “them” I referenced in that regard is very specific to “kids” or children in general.
That’s a pretty strong indictment of K-12 teachers Cobrat. Personally I am not aware of such stereotypes and it hasn’t been my experience in general that K-12 teachers were “academically subpar during their undergrad years.” Was that your experience at Stuy? And if that is true then would you not agree that in this case perhaps it was the best thing to bring in outside law enforcement to evaluate the incident?
No as there are still many places where one can join law enforcement without a college degree or even any post-HS education of some kind. That and from what law enforcement demonstrated here and an article pointing out racial/religious tensions and the punitive inclinations of educational officials and law enforcement against K-12 students…they’re much more willing to go on racial/religious stereotypes and “must respect my authoritah” mentality rather than anything resembling critical thinking.
Cobrat, my point is that any type of stereotyping negates “critical thinking.” Blaming the handling of this matter on your stereotype of K-12 teachers as being intellectually “sub-par” is no better than the stereotyping alleged in this thread.