The Muslim teen arrested for bringing a clock he built to class — which teachers thought was a bomb — has sparked a campaign of support on Twitter, with #IStandWithAhmed now the
site's top-trending hashtag.
Everybody from President Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton to NASA has tweeted encouraging messages to 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed, who on Monday was handcuffed by cops and marched out of MacArthur High School in Texas.
Obama tweeted:
Clinton told the boy: "Assumptions and fear don't keep us safe — they hold us back. Ahmed, stay curious and keep building."
Friends of Ahmed have accused the school officials of Islamophobia for their overreaction.
But the school district spokesperson defended the response, insisting officials had acted with "an abundance of caution" to a gadget that did, in fact, resemble an explosive device.
A photo snapped of Ahmed standing in handcuffs and wearing a NASA t-shirt with the space agency's logo on it has now been retweeted tens of thousands of times and has appeared on countless websites.
Others weighing included rap mogul Russell Simmons, who tweeted: "Stay strong little brother. You are a genius and we all support your incredible passion for innovation + technology." TV host Montell Williams called the incident, "disgusting."
NASA — where Ahmed one day hopes to work as a scientist — also stepped up to the plate with Bobak Ferdowsi, a systems engineer at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, tweeting:
''Hey Ahmed, give me a call in a couple years. We could always use smart, curious & creative people."
The boy told The Dallas Morning News that his hobby was inventing things and making the clock "was really easy."
"I wanted to show something small at first ... they took it wrong so I was arrested for a hoax bomb," he said.
Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd has said charges won't be filed and said his ethnicity wasn’t a factor.
"We live in an age where you can't take things like that to school," Boyd said. "Of course we've seen across our country horrific things happen, so we have to err on the side of caution."