A clock or a bomb trigger, can you tell the difference?

The latest outrage being used to promote the false narrative about unfair treatment of Muslims is the teenager, Ahmed Mohamed, in Irving Texas arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school. If you just skimmed the surface and saw the picture of the skinny nerd in the NASA t-shirt in handcuffs it would be easy to see a problem.

And there is one, but it’s not discrimination against a Muslim kid that wouldn’t have happened to a non-Muslim. It’s nanny state, zero tolerance policies that take away the ability to apply common sense to complicated situations. In this case, whether or not to put cuffs on a 14 year old.

But as far as the other question, was the clock device he brought to school a legitimate cause for concern, the answer is an unequivocal yes. I have built and taught classes on improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and the clock he brought to school is a dead ringer for the trigger used on many of these homemade bombs.

Here is a side by side comparison of Ahmed’s clock and an Iranian-made IED trigger used to kill US troops in Iraq. Even more importantly, here is a picture of an IED training device sold to US law enforcement agencies to help them identify and learn how to deal with homemade bombs. They would have been deficient in performing their public safety duties if they had not done a full examination and investigation of the device, it’s presence at school and the person who built it and brought it there.

The grievance mongers of CAIR and other Islamist front groups are using this incident to portray the Irving, TX police and government as anti-Islamic. They point to another incident where Mayor Beth Van Duyne refused to accept an Islamic tribunal in her town that was trying to supplant US law with Shariah law. That would have been un-American and Mayor Van Duyne was appropriately American in saying absolutely not. We felt strongly enough about that to award her our Defender of Freedom award earlier this year.

We don’t know why Ahmed built and brought his clock to school, but he and his father were certainly quick to trot out quotes about it happening because of his brown skin, or that it wouldn’t have happened if he wasn’t a Muslim. There is zero evidence that Ahmed was singled out due to his religion, and two teachers who saw the device both told him to put it away because it resembled a bomb.

It is time to tell the outrage industry to quit abusing our public servants for doing the jobs we ask them to do.