Town Hall, by Kyle Sideler, Sep. 18, 2015:
As the initial hubbub surrounding the story of Ahmed Mohammed and his “clock” is beginning to die down to a dull roar, it’s worth looking at where exactly the skepticism of his story arrives from.
Obviously, the young man, in his NASA T-Shirt and glasses cuts a sympathetic image. But the swift appearance on the scene of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), raises questions. If this was a misunderstanding and overzealous “Zero tolerance” police work, perhaps it has since been manipulated into something more.
In the case of Ahmed Mohammed, the introduction of CAIR into the equation suddenly pivoted the discussion from whether police exercised decent judgment, to accusations that all of the city of Irving, it’s school system, police, and government were islamophobes, and it was their Islamophobia, and not a beeping box filled with strange wires and circuits, that led police to Ahmed Mohammed.
It’s no surprise that an organization like CAIR would target Irving, since its Mayor, Beth Van Duyne, brought attention to an attempt by Muslim Brotherhood (MB) linked Imams to form a Shariah law tribunal in North Texas, and raised a ruckus by supporting the Constitution over the introduction of foreign law. One of the organizations linked to the tribunal runs the mosque attended by the Mohammed family.
Is it possible CAIR is attempting to use this controversy in order to target one of its political opponents? Judging from history, it seems likely.
The Council on American Islamic Relations was formed in response to a 1993 meeting in Philadelphia held by members of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and took place under the watchful eye of the FBI.
CAIR has always been far more than the civil rights organization it purports to be. Indeed at that very meeting, the members of Hamas, including those who would found CAIR, discussed how they could manipulate civil rights in order to further their interests.
From the testimony of FBI agent Lara Burns discussing the propaganda effort to oppose the 1993 Peace Accord:
Q. Were there additional discussions making presentations to America on human rights?
A. Yes.
MR. JONAS: If we can go to Philly Meeting No. 10,
Segment G. That is on page 5 of the excerpted portion. If we can put that on the screen, please, the bottom segment.
Q. (BY MR. JONAS) What does this unidentified male say, please?
A. He says, “The first is to make the agreement fail, and this is a public policy and all of us are opposing it. It is the just the media which exaggerated the issue. Second, finding the alternatives. The first step should be taken advantage of by the brothers in — how to make the agreement fail. The national rights, human rights, stuff which will be exploited in order to make you look legitimate while you call on the annulment of the agreement. (Emphasis added)
Thusly CAIR and its antecedents in the Muslim Brotherhood are on record as feigning concerns about civil and human rights in order to achieve their ends.
Skepticism of CAIR and it’s feigned civil rights posture also appeared when federal prosecutors responded to a CAIR and Muslim American Society (MAS) Amici brief in the case United States V. Sabri Benkahla. In that case the prosecutors noted:
In describing themselves in Amici Brief at 1, CAIR and MAS omit reference to a shared background that limits their membership to those of a particular political bent, and undercuts their credibility. (Emphasis added)
The prosecutors go on to describe CAIR and MAS as Muslim Brotherhood entities which the federal government has shown engages in deception in order to further the interest of terrorist organizations.
Since CAIR was first outted by the Federal government for its role in deception operations on behalf of terrorism, CAIR has been caught up in numerous false hate crimes. As Professor Daniel Pipes noted in a 2005 article, CAIR has routinely, and knowingly, claimed as hate crimes events that either did not occur, or where the victim was in fact the perpetrator, such as claims of racist arson when the motive was in fact insurance fraud.
Perhaps most notorious was CAIR’s involvement in the 2006 “Flying Imams” case, where six imams returning from a conference of the North American Imam Federation (a group whose website publicly praises a MB leader Yusuf Al Qaradawi, who issued a 2004 fatwa calling for the death of Americans in Iraq), claimed they were unfairly ejected from a U.S. Airways flight for loudly praying.
As it turned out, those men were ejected from the flight not for prayers, but after passengers and airline employees reported that they had engaged in a number of suspicious behaviors involving swapping seats to take up those known to be favored by hijackers, seeking heavy metal seatbelt extenders which their size did not require, and other activities which even a Federal Air Marshal agreed were telltale signs of alarm.
CAIR intervened with a press conference and a lawsuit against the airline, the employees and even “John Doe passengers.” In that case the public rallied around the passengers, and congress passed a law protecting private travelers from lawsuits, when their good faith suspicions of terrorist activity led to security officials taking action.
Like the situation with the Flying Imams, CAIRs interjection into this case suggests that it is about much more than the intentions of a young man bringing an odd electronic device to school. One’s positions on zero tolerance policies in school are not the issue of debate.
The issue is CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood, and their efforts to keep those who “see something” that seems suspicious from “saying something.” That goes for teachers, airline passengers and mayors.
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Video: A Closer Look at Ahmed’s Clock
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Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock… and Ourselves
For one last bit of confirmation, I located the pencil box Ahmed used for his project. During this video interview he again claims it was his “invention” and that he “made” the device – but the important thing at the moment, at 1:13, we see him showing the pencil box on his computer screen. Here it is on Amazon, where it’s clearly labeled as being 8.25 inches wide. Our eBay seller also conveniently took a photo of the clock next to a ruler to show it’s scale – about 8 inches wide. The dimensions all line up perfectly.
So there you have it folks, Ahmed Mohamad did not invent, nor build a clock. He took apart an existing clock, and transplanted the guts into a pencil box, and claimed it was his own creation. It all seems really fishy to me.
If we accept the story about “inventing” an alarm clock is made up, as I think I’ve made a pretty good case for, it’s fair to wonder what other parts of the story might be made up, not reported factually by the media, or at least, exaggerated.
I refer back again to this YouTube video interview with Ahmed. He explains that he closed up the box with a piece of cord because he didn’t want it to look suspicious. I’m curious, why would “looking suspicious” have even crossed his mind before this whole event unfolded, if he was truly showing off a hobby project, something so innocuous as an alarm clock. Why did he choose a pencil box, one that looks like a miniature briefcase no less, as an enclosure for a clock? It’s awful hard to see the clock with the case closed. On the other hand, with the case open, it’s awful dangerous to have an exposed power transformer sitting near the snooze button (unless, perhaps his invention was to stop serial-snooze-button pressers by giving them a dangerous electrical shock!)
So again, I’m pointing all this out – about the specifics of the clock – not to pick on the poor kid. I’m picking on us, our culture, and our media. I don’t even care about the clock itself at this point.
If we stop and think – was it really such a ridiculous reaction from the teacher and the police in the first place? How many school shootings and incidents of violence have we had, where we hear afterwards “this could have been prevented, if only we paid more attention to the signs!” Teachers are taught to be suspicious and vigilant. Ahmed wasn’t accused of making a bomb – he was accused of making a look-alike, a hoax. And be honest with yourself, a big red digital display with a bunch of loose wires in a brief-case looking box is awful like a Hollywood-style representation of a bomb. Everyone jumped to play the race and religion cards and try and paint the teachers and police as idiots and bigots, but in my mind, they were probably acting responsibly and erring on the side of caution to protect the rest of their students, just in case. “This wouldn’t have happened if Ahmed were white,” they say. We’re supposed to be sensitive to school violence, but apparently religious and racial sensitivity trumps that. At least we have another clue about how the sensitivity and moral outrage pecking order lies.
Because, is it possible, that maybe, just maybe, this was actually a hoax bomb? A silly prank that was taken the wrong way? That the media then ran with, and everyone else got carried away? Maybe there wasn’t even any racial or religious bias on the parts of the teachers and police.
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