The story of a 14-year-old Muslim boy from Texas who was arrested on suspicion of taking a bomb to school has been widely commented on this week. Poor Ahmed Mohamed, a student who brought his homemade clock project into school, promptly found himself handcuffed and in police custody. Despite telling the teachers in charge that he was in possession of nothing more than a clock, they called in the police anyway. Perhaps in their apparent wisdom they deemed his name too Boko Haramish to take the chance. Who knows?

It’s one of those stories that has you asking: “Really? Surely there must be more to it”. Well, it appears not. It’s also odd that those intuitive enough to identify a potential ‘bomb’ on the premises weren’t proactive enough to evacuate them. This goes some way as to demonstrating how credible they truly considered this ‘threat’.

This kind of unjust treatment is not the best way to encourage and inspire budding young innovators, I hope you will agree.

Anyhow, it appears this story has a happy ending after all. This well publicised injustice has led to a host of well-wishes from famous entrepreneurs, giant electronic firms and even an invite to the White House from The President himself. Good for Ahmed.

This brings me to the curious case of this item from online ‘news’ network ‘The Young Turks’.

Ana Kasparian says:

“. . . [Mohamed is] a victim of the fear-mongering we’re talking about now, Cenk. The same atheists who spend all their time debating about which religion is the worst and coming to the conclusion that Muslims are the most violent and they should be the most feared and we should put all of our attention on them—okay, that’s the kind of fear-mongering that leads to an innocent 14-year-old being arrested for doing a science project.”

Now, I’m fully aware that this is an isolated excerpt, so I would urge you to watch the full segment. However, nothing contained within excuses the fact that Ana Kasparian felt atheists (vocally critical of Islam) deserved special mention when pondering the inspiration for an anti-Muslim incident – in Texas of all places.

The Young Turks (Cenk Uygur especially) have been heading down this bizarre path for sometime. It seems they have their straw bogey man, and it’s a ‘new atheist’. Fox News took a similar route recently when Bill O’Reilly blamed atheism for the tragic murder of two TV journalists. You’ll never run the risk of a fatwa this way I suppose.

The Christian Right often accuse atheists of being too afraid to criticise Islam. Liberal Regressives like Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian accuse atheists of only criticising Islam. Both groups of people are damaging this conversation.

Stephen Knight is host of The #GSPodcast. You can listen to The Godless Spellchecker Podcast here, and support it by becoming a patron here.

[Image Credit/ The Guardian]

Like this: Like Loading...