Parents of Ahmed Mohamed, the boy temporarily detained in September for bringing a suspected bomb/hoax bomb to school, which turned out to be clock parts in a pencil case, have threatened to sue the Texas city of Irving unless they pay them $15 million in compensation.
Huffington PostTimeBreitbartNot long after the initial incident, Ahmed received widespread support on social media, an invitation to the White House from the president, internship offers from major tech companies, several scholarship offers - one of which he is now undertaking in Qatar - as well as numerous gifts and donations.
I think this going too far. Firstly, I don't think the school acted unreasonably (hear me out). The clock looked rather suspicious, he allegedly kept taking it out and setting off the alarm even though the teachers told him not to, and in the current climate around bomb threats and zero-tolerance on related practical jokes, that is enough to warrant a talking to by the police (who, lest we forget, let him go home as soon as they suspected no foul play). And lets not kid ourselves, had he been white, or Chinese, or anything else, there would have been no media furore. It should have just ended there. But he was Arab, and his father who
just so happened to be a Muslim political activist, decided to take this as far as he could (and is now attempting to milk it further for a cool $15 million).
There was a lot of bad initial reporting on this, and people jumped on the bandwagon before reading into it. I think this recent development really solidifies this as an open-and-shut case of pure opportunism.
(Yes I see the typo in the title...)