The humiliation of Ahmed Mohamed

Last Monday’s detention of 14 year old Ahmed Mohamed in Texas—a bright young man who was arrested, cuffed, and taken to police headquarters for bringing a “device” to school, which turned out to be an electronic clock that was a science project—has aroused tremendous discussion throughout the U.S. A lot of this discussion centers on whether he was detained because he was a Muslim, and we need to have this discussion (see below). But largely neglected is another point: whether, in the U.S., we have created such a climate of fear that kids of all stripes are being humiliated and mistreated for “infractions” that are trivial and dumb. But let’s back up and discuss three questions:

Was it proper to detain Mohamed?  Clearly not; it was reprehensible. The kid was humiliated, taken out of the school, and put in handcuffs. Having been arrested, cuffed, and thrown in a paddy wagon for protesting apartheid at the South African Embassy, I know how frightening that is, and I knew it was coming. But imagine how much more humiliated Mohamed was to have been perp-marched to jail in front of his school peers. The photograph of the cuffed child is heartbreaking: it shows a kid who has suddenly come into conflict with society for reasons he can’t fathom—a kid who in a matter of minutes lost his innocence.

The school and cops could have done many other things that would not have scared and humiliated Mohamed. They could have, as Cenk Uygar notes in the video below, simply taken him to the principal’s office and waited until the “device” was inspected and cleared. Then they could have apologized for what they did to him. They have not.

But there are two silver linings that came from his arrest. The first is that he’s garnered tremendous support from Americans, including President Obama, has prospective employers contacting him (he plans to go to MIT), and, I suspect, has a bright future. The second is that it may allow us to reassess what we’re doing to our schoolchildren with these draconian regulations, as well to continue our discussion of “Islamophobia” and do some soul searching about how we treat Muslims.

Was his being a Muslim the main reason he was detained? This is not yet clear, and may never be. The school and police have said that Mohamed was treated like any other child, regardless of who they are, but I’m not so sure about that. The anti-Muslim accusations are apparently based on a single statement by a policeman who, arriving at the scene, said this: ““Yup. That’s who I thought it was.”  That’s suspicious. And although the school and rest of police haven’t said anything that implicates the boy’s religion in their behavior, we don’t know what went through their minds, or whether the school acted as they did because they knew he was a Muslim. As skeptics, we shouldn’t immediately assume that this is what happened.

Of course it’s not just Muslims who have been treated horribly by schools for innocuous behavior. Ken White, a first-amendment attorney who writes at Popehat, gives some other chilling examples:

In his head, Ahmed lives in an idealized world he learned about in robotics club: a world where individuality and curiosity and initiative are appreciated. Or at least he did. But this week he found out that he actually lives in a different world, a grim real world controlled by school administrators and cops who are deeply suspicious of individuality, if not openly hostile. Ahmed lives in a world where children’s lives are limited by the stupid, ineffectual fear of the petty and the ignorant. He lives in a world where school administrators strip-search thirteen-year-old girls to look for ibuprofin and suspend eight-year-olds for making pretend finger-guns while playing cops and robbers. He lives in a world where police arrest seven-year-olds for bringing a nerf gun to class and perp-walk twelve-year-olds in front of their peers for writing “I love my friends” on a desk with a marker.

. . . Did the putative adults pestering Ahmed do it because his name is Ahmed Mohamed and he’s brown? Maybe. “Yup. That’s who I thought it was,” said one officer mysteriously upon seeing him. But on the other hand, this is the era of zero tolerance and of institutionalized paranoia and of petty little people using fear to hold on to power. This is what our kids’ lives are like, and we’ve decided to accept it. Schools are safer now than before, but we’ve decided to feed on the fear the media feeds us and accept that they are more dangerous, justifying harsher treatment of kids. Kids are safer than ever, but we’ve consented to being constantly terrified about various menaces to them. Cops are safer, but we’ve decided to accept their narrative that they are the targets of an unprecedented war, and hand them the power they say they need.

We need to stop detaining any kid for innocuous behavior under these stupid “no tolerance” policies. As White points out, perhaps Mohamed’s detention would have happened regardless of his race or faith, or perhaps it’s a simple example of racism: because his skin is a different color than that of most other kids. Or perhaps it’s a true example of “Islamophobia”: what I consider the demonization of individual Muslims because of their faith—not the criticism of the religion. I doubt we’ll ever know the answer, and we certainly shouldn’t rush to judgment with cries of “Islamophobia!” As atheists, we’re supposed to rely on evidence rather than preference. But we still need to search our souls about whether we harbor overt or covert bigotry against Muslims. (More on this below.)

Was atheism responsible for the “climate of fear” or “fear of Muslims” that led to  Mohamed’s detention? Here I say, “I think that’s a dumb and irresponsible accusation.” Yet some people have pinned the detention of Mohamed on anti-Muslim sentiments aroused by atheists. In the Young Turks video below, for example, Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss the incident, and Kasparin says this at 7:50:

“. . . [Mohamed is] a victim of the fear-mongering we’re talking about now, Cenk. The same atheists who spend all their time debating about which religion is the worst and coming to the conclusion that Muslims are the most violent and they should be the most feared and we should put all of our attention on them—okay, that’s the kind of fear-mongering that leads to an innocent 14-year-old being arrested for doing a science project.”

Now Kasparin’s statement is palpable nonsense for several reasons. (The rest of Uygur’s and Kasparin’s discussion seems quite reasonable). First, the teachers who called the cops and the cops who arrested the boy were almost certainly not atheists (this is Texas, remember?). They may have been bigoted against Muslims, or acted out of racist rather than antireligious motivations, but I doubt that any of them have even heard of Sam Harris or Ayaan Hirsi Ali. If they were anti-Muslim, that almost certainly came from the kind of bigotry that arises from Christianity or xenophobia. But let’s not pin it on unbelievers. That is “atheistphobia.”

This brings up the distinction between dislike of Islam and dislike of Muslims. The latter is often called “Islamophobia,” but I’d prefer to call it something like “Muslimophobia” to draw a distinction between bigotry against individuals and criticism of the harmful tenets of Islam.

It seems the most rational (and effective) course of action to criticize the tenets of religions while avoiding demonizing believers.  On this site I criticize Christianity far more often than Islam, although I consider Islam at present the more dangerous faith. This is because I’m more familiar with the excesses of Christianity, which come to my attention more frequently (often from readers). Further, Christianity is in the process of discarding its pernicious doctrines, while Islam retains many of them, including institutionalized discrimination against women and gays, and the belief by many that it’s proper to kill apostates or nonbelievers. But make no mistake about it: I dislike all forms of religion, which I see as superstitions. But let us not say that all faiths are exactly equal in how much hatred and discrimination they inspire.

And let us not discriminate against people simply because of their faith. That is true “Muslimophobia,” and is not becoming to atheists or secularists. If humans do something bad in the name of their faith, we can criticize them, arrest them, and so on. And if we think that religion makes people do bad things, by all means criticize that religion and its effects on the human psyche. But remember that there are plenty of good religious people, Muslims and non-Muslims, and they deserve the same individual treatment and respect as does everyone else.  So yes, I stand with Ahmed Mohamed, I stand against anti-Muslim bigotry, and I stand against the culture of fear that is making us suspect that any innocent child with an aspirin, a clock, or a nerf gun is a terrorist.

h/t: Robert D.