The father of a Sudanese-American school student, whose teacher mistook his homemade clock for a bomb, said the controversial incident was the result of misconceptions about Islam.
Mohamed al-Hassan told Egyptian satellite TV channel CBC on Sunday that his son Ahmed, a 14-year-old student at MacArthur High School in Texas, had always been fond of inventions. “He used to repair all home appliances and his clock was made of junk left in the garage,” Mr. Al-Hassan told CBC.
“My son took his clock to school to show it to his teachers. His teacher and his colleagues checked the device suspiciously before we were surprised with a phone call from the school’s officials to the police, accusing him of developing a bomb,” Hassan added.
The misunderstanding, which resulted in Ahmed’s brief arrest, prompted US President Barack Obama to invite the young inventor to the White House. He also won moral support from Senator Hillary Clinton and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
“I believe what has happened was the result of accumulations of misunderstanding of religion due to a small minority, and I hope my son will be the last to pay the price of that,” Hassan told the channel.
“I’ve lived in the States for 30 years, but since the September 11, 2001 attacks, our lives changed”.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
