Obama praises Muslim boy detained for bringing homemade clock to school

A Muslim whiz kid sparked fears of a terror attack when he brought a homemade clock to school that looked suspiciously like a homemade explosive ­device — a move that got him ­arrested and then earned him an invitation to the White House from President Obama.
Ahmed Mohamed, 14, was arrested by cops in Irving, Texas, after the clock, made from a circuit board and tucked into his backpack, started sounding its alarm. When he was forced to show it to his teacher, she mistook it for a bomb.
The freshman got hauled off in handcuffs and briefly locked up in a juvenile detention center following the Monday scare, and he was suspended from school for three days.
On Wednesday, Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd said that while Ahmed’s invention was “certainly suspicious in nature,” the teen wouldn’t be charged with possessing a hoax bomb. Boyd said there was no evidence Ahmed intended to “create alarm” by displaying the pencil case stuffed full of circuits and wires.

He also insisted the skinny, bespectacled boy would have been arrested regardless of his religious beliefs, saying, “We have to err on the side of caution.”
But minutes after the chief’s announcement, Obama tweeted a message to Ahmed, an aspiring engineer who uses his bedroom as a workshop to tinker with electronics.

“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,” the president wrote.

The White House also invited Ahmed — who was wearing a NASA T-shirt when he was busted — to speak with astronauts and scientists at an “Astronomy Night” set for Oct. 19.
At an afternoon news conference, Ahmed was cheered when he said he had accepted Obama’s offer. He called his teacher’s ­reaction and his arrest “really sad,” but said he was “really happy” with the subsequent outpouring of support.
By late afternoon, the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed was the top trend on Twitter, with virtually every user blasting the arrest.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg used his social network to extend his own invite to the teen, writing: “Having the skill and ambition to build something cool should lead to applause, not ­arrest. The future belongs to people like Ahmed.”

In a statement posted on its website, the Irving Independent School District complained that the “information that has been made public to this point is very unbalanced.
“We always ask our students and staff to immediately report if they observe any suspicious items and/or suspicious behavior,” the district said.