God bless Obama and Zuckerberg for their leadership. They gave hope to the hopeless and what they did was very American; that is uplifting the spirit of Americans who are at a disadvantage.
As opposed to most Muslims who bluntly blame the “right wingers” we choose not to blame but find solutions, and that is, what causes one to have that fear of Muslims and what does it take to change.
We will write an open letter to the Irving School District Superintendent, there is a dire need for education and orientation of the teachers. I am checking on their system, most ISD’s in Dallas area have a Multi-cultural night every other month where kids bring their parents in their native costumes, and bring one dish to share…. Is Irving ISD missing that?
When we know each other, most of the fears vanish into thin air.
There is room of AMI to work on such situations, but it takes a lot of time.
Here is the full Audio:
The show begins thus, “We begin with the arrest of a 14 year old Muslim boy who is a member of the Robotics Club at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas. He brought a home-made digital alarm clock to school that a teacher decided was a bomb and young Ahmed Mohamed soon found himself handcuffed and fingerprinted by police who ignored his pleas that he had built an alarm clock, insisting “so you tried to make a bomb?” Mike Ghouse, the Executive Director of the American Muslim Institution in Washington D.C. and the former President of the Together Foundation in Dallas, Texas joins us to discuss this overwrought example of Islamophobia that has provoked outrage with Face books head Mark Zuckerberg tweeting “Ahmed, if you ever want to come by Face book, I’d love to meet you. Keep Building.” And has President Obama tweeting, “Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.”
A few good pieces on the topic:
1. http://act.faithfulamerica.org/sign/muslim_clock?referring_akid=685.303268.XHeIOD&source=facebook
3. http://www.vox.com/2015/9/16/9337053/Ahmed-Mohamed-school-arrest
Mike Ghouse is an Executive Director of American Muslim Institution, a proactive voice for American Muslims. He is a thinker, writer and a speaker and is committed to offer pluralistic solutions to issues of the day.