Self-victimization hoaxes are all too common because society never fails to reward them: Ahmed was arrested not because of his race or religion but because his “clock” looked like a bomb

It sure is hard being a Muslim, isn’t it?

quips Benny Huang.

You can’t even bring a briefcase with protruding wires to school without everybody thinking you’re a terrorist. Sheesh. 

As Glenn Reynolds is fond of saying, it's Potemkin villages all the way down. Benny Huang goes on to ironically heap praise on the kind at the center of the controversy.

Fourteen year-old Ahmed Mohamed has learned well how to play the victim. The MacArthur High School student caused a ruckus last week in Irving, Texas, when he brought a briefcase to school containing clock parts. He claimed it was a “clock” that he “invented” over the weekend—though it now appears evident that he didn’t really invent anything. According to Ahmed, he brought it to school to impress his engineering teacher. When the briefcase began beeping during English class, the teacher mistook it for a bomb and called the principal. 

 … Ahmed has since been invited to bring his briefcase to the White House to meet President Obama. Oddly enough, the Secret Service would never in a million years allow a similar device anywhere near the President of the United States if it weren’t pre-cleared; and for good reason.

 … on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes,” [when] Hayes asked Ahmed how it felt to go through this whole ordeal Ahmed replied, “I feel really well after, cause before I didn’t think I was going to get any support because I’m a Muslim boy.” I’m sounding the BS alarm. He captured the world’s sympathy because he’s a Muslim boy. I don’t believe for a moment that he could not have foreseen this outpouring of support (and money).

He continued: “So I thought I was just going to be another victim of injustice. But thanks to all my supporters on social media I got this far, thanks to you guys…I see it as a way of people sending a message to the rest of the world that just because something happens to you because of who you are, no matter what you do, people have your back.”

See how he’s framed the issue? This is something that “happened” to him because of “who [he is.]” The implication is clear: this whole situation would have played out differently if he had been a fair-skinned Christian lad. Baloney. Any kid of any race or religion who brought the same item to school would have caused the same stir. The only difference I can see is that a white Christian would not have had the Islamophobia card to play. Consequently, he would not have had the support of a dedicated “civil rights” organization, would not have been invited to the White House, would not have been financially rewarded with multiple crowdsourcing campaigns, and would not have appeared on MSNBC.

Ahmed was arrested not because of his race or religion but because his “clock” looked like a bomb. It’s a briefcase with a bunch of wires and a circuit board. Nor are clocks and bombs mutually exclusive. Time bombs contain clocks. After showing his “clock” to two teachers, both of them told him that it looked a lot like a bomb. His engineering teacher, the one he was supposedly trying to impress, even advised him not to take it to other classes. 

There are some clues that Ahmed baited school officials by knowingly bringing a suspicious device to school. It might have been another self-victimization hoax, an attempt to “prove” other people’s prejudices. Self-victimization hoaxes are all too common because society never fails to reward them. I won’t say for certain that that’s what happened. It’s possible that he really did build a clock to impress his engineering teacher, stumbled into this mess quite by accident, then decided to capitalize on his victimhood. In any case, he is trying to capitalize on his victimhood—and not just financially, though he’s doing that too.

 … I will say this: the teachers, the principal, and the police did nothing wrong except failing to call his parents immediately. They should have done that. The crybabies at CAIR can go stick it. This is not an Islamophobic conspiracy.

  … The situation smells as fishy as last week’s sushi. But I can say with certainty that young Mr. Mohamed, the “inventor” whose “invention” was actually mass-produced by Radio Shack decades before he was born, is milking this for all it’s worth. What he wants is not equal treatment but for Muslims to be handled with kiddy gloves. His goal, and that of CAIR, is to perpetuate the Muslim-as-victim myth so that reasonable people will second-guess their own motives when they see Muslims acting suspiciously. Don’t be fooled by this professional victim.