And how old is this ‘kid’?
I was running around outside most of last week so I didn’t see Dawkins’s latest adventures in publicly chastising a 14-year-old boy for saying he “made” a clock when he didn’t really “make” a clock in the strictest sense of “making” something. I’ve seen some of his previous adventures in that exciting field, and blogged about some of those, but I missed the latest, in which he really outdid himself. He outdid himself by such a margin that CNN took the trouble to report on it.
Eminent British scientist Richard Dawkins has drawn criticism on social media for what some say is an unfair comparison between Ahmed Mohamed, the Texas teenager whose school project was mistaken for a bomb, and a young ISIS killer.
But Dawkins says he was merely drawing a parallel between their ages.
“HORRIFIED anyone thinks I could POSSIBLY liken Ahmed to a killer,” Dawkins said in a tweet Wednesday. “My ONLY point of comparison was their AGES: kids not immune to criticism.”
Yes. You know…it’s striking how many of these HORRIFIED anyone thinks he could POSSIBLY whatever it was that time, and that one, and that one, tweets he’s tweeted. He’s tweeted very many of them. He’s always finding himself having to tweet these all-caps horrified corrections. Wouldn’t you think he would spot the pattern, and correct for it? Wouldn’t you think it would dawn on him that people keep getting his meaning wrong, and that might not be solely because people are stupid? That he might be phrasing them clumsily? That in his eagerness to be provocative and witty, he often comes off just being rude?
Wouldn’t you think he could go back and look at that tweet again and realize that it does look as if he were saying what so many thought he was saying?
Or is that just me?
Dawkins, a leading voice in the atheist movement, was reacting to news that the Mohamed family was demanding $15 million in damages and an apology from city and school officials in Irving, Texas, over their treatment of the teen.
In September, the 14-year-old, who is Muslim, was detained, questioned and hauled off in handcuffs after bringing a handmade clock to school, which a teacher thought could have been a bomb.
“Don’t call him ‘clock boy’ since he never made a clock. Hoax Boy, having hoaxed his way into the White House, now wants $15M in addition!” Dawkins tweeted Tuesday.
Dawkins has been calling Ahmed “Hoax Boy” for weeks. It’s exceptionally obnoxious. Ahmed is fourteen. I flatly don’t believe he decided to devise a cunning plan to get invited to the White House for a brief visit, and that fiddling with a clock was that plan. I think a grown man, an Oxford academic, a best-selling author, should not be labeling him “Hoax Boy” in that childish and nasty way.
The evolutionary biologist has been vocal in his belief that the case — which made Ahmed a cause célèbre, prompted the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed to trend, and led to a personal invitation to the White House from President Barack Obama — was a “hoax.”
He has repeatedly insisted that Ahmed did not make a clock but rather “took a clock out of its case and put it in a box,” and has questioned the teen’s motives in doing so.
And repeatedly called him “Hoax Boy” – on Twitter, where he has 1.2 million followers.
And then he did even worse than that.
When Twitter users chided the 74-year-old scientist for “picking on a kid,” he responded by tweeting a link to a news story about a child ISIS killer.
“‘But he’s only a kid.’ Yes, a ‘kid’ old enough to sue for $15M those whom he hoaxed. And how old is this ‘kid’?” tweeted Dawkins, linking to a story about a young ISIS killer beheading a victim.
And then he was surprised and HORRIFIED that people thought he was comparing Ahmed to the kid in the photo.
Me, I’m horrified that Dawkins is still on Twitter.
And there’s more. The story goes on. People protested and Dawkins responded in his usual clueless and belligerent way, and it’s enough to make you want to eject your lunch.
He’s mean; that’s all there is to it. He’s a mean bastard, and Twitter gives him a place to take his meanness out for exercise, and that’s what he does. Apparently nothing will convince him this is not a clever or useful or productive thing to do.
Oh, what an appetite for wonder that guy has.
I wonder why the most important element of this story to RD is that Ahmed may have overstated his technical capabilities. Not, you know, the racial profiling, harassment, lies to the media, and the completely illegal detention & interrogation.
I wonder how RD can possibly believe that cunning Ahmed, all on his own, after finagling an invitation to the White House, is now craftily suing for the princely sum of $15M. Not, you know, being advised by adult family members and legal experts to seek a settlement based on his horrifying and dehumanizing experience.
I wonder if RD has actually looked at the settlement letter, even. Here it is, if you’re curious. IANAL, but it looks far from frivolous.
I really do despise Dawkins. As if a writer at his level doesn’t know that comparisons have implications.
Also… am I the only one who figures the Daesh kid is probably *not* very responsible for his actions? We just had a report of a girl killed for trying to leave. The boy didn’t overpower that man by himself. Adults lead the way, adults gave orders, the kid has blood on his hands, nightmares, and will probably die within a few years. Who knows what he even knows or understands about what he’s caught up in.
Samantha, no you’re not alone. I was too busy swallowing bile (because of both that photo and Dawkins general Fuckheadedness)
Damn, Jen, I wish I’d thought of your first line for a title.
I know. I’ve been wondering for weeks why the most important element of this story to RD is that Ahmed may have overstated his technical capabilities, as I’m sure you and thousands of others have. Maybe he did; so what? It was just a thing he took to school to show his teacher; that’s not a category with rules or minimum qualifications. Jeez.
(Your link is to this post.)
Haha, I suck at internet.
THIS is the link: It’s a TPM memo that contains a PDF of the letter.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ahmed-mohamed-compensation-civil-lawsuit
Thank you!
It’s not the most professional legal letter I’ve ever read, but it makes a compelling case, at least to me.
Seems ironic that a significant part of the claim for damages are linked to the negative and prejudiced internet response–how it must gall Dawkins that his Twitter behavior has likely driven up the price!
Also, it’s heartbreaking to glean from that letter that Ahmed was in the AVID program, which if you don’t know, is a national program designed to help kids achieve their full academic potential, and especially targeted to kids with minority or otherwise underrepresented identities. From the AVID website:
and
(http://www.avid.org/secondary.ashx)
According to the attorney’s letter, this is the class he was yanked out of by the principal and police officers.
I’m sure Dawkins would have been much more sympathetic if Ahmed had been caught smuggling honey…
Yes about the Internet response. Dawkins has of course been simply plugging into an existing campaign of trashing Ahmed – in fact when he first got going he cited that dopy “debunking” video that some crank did. Nice work, O Great Man of Science.
I didn’t know about the AVID program. Damn them all.
While it’s highly unlikely that Ahmed created this drama for promotional purposes, his father is a more suspicious character. Although “hoax” is too strong a word, this was milked for all its worth by someone who would clearly gain from being seen as a fighter against anti-Muslim oppression. It didn’t help that his sister had threatened to blow up the school, either.
That said, I do wonder why ol’ Dawky is still Tweeting about this when everyone else has moved on to the next big internet thing. He must enjoy the drama.
“Milked” in what way? How do you differentiate “milking”, which connotes negative, exploitative action, from more legitimate uses of the system, i.e. publicizing the unfairness of the arrest and pursuing a settlement through civil court?
You know what? The only places I’ve seen that charge made are right-wing propaganda/islamophobic sites like Breitbart, Worldnut Daily, etc. If you have a more newsworthy source for this claim, I’d like to see it.
Jen Phillips #12:
I can only go on what I find.
The bomb threat involving Ahmed’s sister seems to be an allegation made by another student; that allegation was never contested by Eynah however, and she served a three-day suspension.
There are only bits and pieces on Sudan’s National Reform Party. One unpleasant element in their policy platform is support for Saudi Arabia’s bombing of Yemen. There are hints that overall this Party is moderate and fairly liberal, but I’ll wait for a proper assessment from someone who knows Sudanese politics. (the domain has expired on the English language version of their website)
There are also allegations that Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed is a 9/11 truther, who thinks the attacks were staged to make Muslims look bad.
But maybe I’m a bit paranoid, because, you know, he’s a politician and all.
So presumably, what you find is exclusively on the faux news agitator sites?
There’s a reason that there’s so little overlap between the content of these sites and the mainstream media, and it has far less to do with ‘liberal bias’ than it does with journalistic rigor. As low as their quality control appears to be, in general, the major media sites do require a minimal amount of verification before making such claims.
And I note that you’ve gone from making a statement of ‘fact’:
to something more suggestive:
So since she served the time, she must be guilty and we can just go ahead and assume she really did “threaten to blow up the school”? Really? Can you not think of other explanations, assuming any of this is even slightly true? Privacy laws being what they are, schools can’t simply hand out information to the press about particular transgressions or disciplinary actions for named students, so there’s a lot wrong with taking this information at face value.
It seems important to point out that NONE of these allegations contest the facts of what was done, by school and city officials, to this 14 year old boy. All they do is try to justify the fear-driven actions against this family based on their ethnic origins. That’s repugnant, xenophobic behavior.
@justinr #13
Two small points (well, not all that small and I am on record as being skeptical about much of this affair):
1. Dad was perfectly happy to be received by and photographed in the company of Sudan’s leader, a genocidal tyrant who is wanted on an international arrest warrant, a man who has a lot more blood on his hands than ISIS http://bashirwatch.org/
2. The lawyer’s letter is (in my brother-in-law’s lawyerly opinion) mainly for show. The mess(age) of an actual court case might not be so easy to contain.
So I am largely in agreement with you, Justin: the boy’s dad is an, um, politician. And Dawkins has a habit of tweeting with his foot in his mouth.
Jen Phillips beat me to the punch a month ago in comment #1, but I just today saw a FB post criticizing Dawkins’s closed – mindedness, and mentioning Dawkins’s autobiography, entitled “An Appetite for Wonder.” I couldn’t help goggling at Dawkins’s utter contempt for Ahmed’s appetite for wonder, and Dawkins’s concerted effort to discourage, undermine, and annihilate any such appetite in Ahmed, or anyone else for that matter.