America’s favorite clock boy Ahmed Mohamed preached tolerance and diversity during Astronomy Night on Monday at the White House, even though he met with a brutal dictator the week before.
Ahmed told the Belfast Telegraph that the main lesson he learned from this incident was, “Don’t judge a person by the way they look. Always judge them by their heart.”
On Tuesday, Ahmed told ABC News that he was “glad” that he was arrested for building a clock that looked like a bomb.
“I get to spread my word out to the people and tell them it’s not about the color of your skin or your religion,” Ahmed said. “You always judge a person by their heart, not by what they look like.”
Ahmed says to always judge people by their heart … unless they’re a brutal Islamic dictator. As this author previously wrote, Ahmed met with Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for multiple war crimes. Ahmed was “extremely delighted” to meet al-Bashir. When confronted about his meeting with the dictator, Ahmed was told by advisers to simply refuse to answer the question.
“You always judge a person by their heart, not by what they look like.”
“Clock Boy” Ahmed, pushing the Islamophobia message
Of course, Ahmed is stoked that this incident happened to him. As Daily Wire Editor-In-Chief Ben Shapiro explained on The Kelly File last night, the whole thing was a hoax from the get-go. Ahmed’s “clock was simply a gutted store-bought clock dropped into a case.” Ahmed and his supporters dismiss this as a conspiracy theory, but it’s obvious just by looking at the “clock.” As one tech blogger explains:
For starters, one glance at the printed circuit board in the photo, and I knew we were looking at mid-to-late 1970s vintage electronics. Surely you’ve seen a modern circuit board, with metallic traces leading all over to the various components like an electronic spider’s web. You’ll notice right away the highly accurate spacing, straightness of the lines, consistency of the patterns. That’s because we design things on computers nowadays, and computers assist in routing these lines. Take a look at the board in Ahmed’s clock. It almost looks hand-drawn, right? That’s because it probably was. Computer aided design was in its infancy in the 70s. This is how simple, low cost items (like an alarm clock) were designed. Today, even a budding beginner is going to get some computer aided assistance – in fact they’ll probably start there, learning by simulating designs before building them. You can even simulate or lay out a board with free apps on your phone or tablet. A modern hobbyist usually wouldn’t be bothered with the outdated design techniques. There’s also silk screening on the board. An “M” logo, “C-94” (probably, a part number – C might even stand for “clock”), and what looks like an American flag. More about that in a minute. Point for now being, a hobbyist wouldn’t silk screen logos and part numbers on their home made creation. It’s pretty safe to say already we’re looking at ’70s tech, mass produced in a factory.
So I turned to eBay, searching for vintage alarm clocks. It only took a minute to locate Ahmed’s clock. See this eBay listing, up at the time of this writing. Amhed’s clock was invented, and built, by Micronta, a Radio Shack subsidary. Catalog number 63 765.
The shape and design is a dead give away. The large screen. The buttons on the front laid out horizontally would have been on a separate board – a large snooze button, four control buttons, and two switches to turn the alarm on and off, and choose two brightness levels. A second board inside would have contained the actual “brains” of the unit. The clock features a 9v battery back-up, and a switch on the rear allows the owner to choose between 12 and 24 hour time. (Features like a battery back-up, and a 24 hour time selection seems awful superfluous for a hobby project, don’t you think?) Oh, and about that “M” logo on the circuit board mentioned above? Micronta.
Ahmed’s father has said that the incident would be used to “spread Islam.” Overnight, Ahmed became a rock star. He’s a household name that is now meeting dictators, being awarded “Muslim of the Year,” can pick any school he wants to go to as well as talk to President Barack Obama about Mars and astronomy and meet astronauts at the White House. Ahmed is living such a high life right now that he’s not even taking his precious little clock with him because he “did not have time to return home” to retrieve the device. That “clock” is obviously very important to Ahmed.
Which makes Ahmed’s claim about “how hard it is growing up in America” so rich, since his life has been so rough these past few weeks.