Mohamed visits White House, meets president
Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old Texas boy who was arrested and handcuffed for taking a homemade clock to school, has met with US President Barack Obama at the White House.
On Monday night, he chatted with the US president during astronomy night – an annual event that brings together students, teachers, scientists and space enthusiasts to encourage more students to study math and science.
“We have to watch for and cultivate and encourage those glimmers of curiosity and possibility, not suppress them, not squelch them,” Obama told the audience on the South Lawn. “Not only are the young people’s futures at stake, but our own is at stake.”
Mohamed made his way to the front of the crowd after Obama delivered a speech and met with the president and shook his hand.
Earlier, he expressed gratitude for Obama’s support after his last month's ordeal.
Mohamed, who is the son of a Muslim immigrant from Sudan, was arrested on September 14 after his clock was inexplicably mistaken for a bomb by a teacher at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas. He was suspended for three days, though not charged.
His father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, told the Dallas Morning News that the teenager "just wants to invent good things for mankind. But because his name is Mohamed and because of Sept. 11, I think my son got mistreated."
After his detention, Obama invited him to bring his clock to the White House. “Cool clock, Ahmed,” Mr. Obama said on Twitter, adding: “We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.”
But on Monday night, the ninth-grader left the clock at home. He said that he had been too busy traveling to get it and bring it with him.
Ted Cruz objects
Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidate and Senator Ted Cruz and some other members of the Republican Party criticized Obama for inviting Mohamed to the White House, saying it shows the president has more respect for a Muslim student than for law enforcers.
“President Obama, at every stage, tries to politicize what happens, whether it is this teenager here in Texas, whether it is the shootings we saw in the Pacific Northwest,” Cruz said.
“Over and over again, sadly, he seeks to try to divide us, to try to tear us apart. The president really ought to be looking for ways to bring us together, to unify us,” he added.
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