

The imams said they were merely mediating minor disputes among adherents, not bypassing or contradicting American law. A controversy erupted here in March, when Mayor Beth Van Duyne accused local mosque leaders of attempting to set up a shadow court system, following Islamic law. Muslims have been through a lot in Irving. “But for anybody who has been through this?” He looked around the room, and like any American 14-year-old grappling with issues beyond his control, he answered with the rising inflection of a question. “It’s worth it, once you realize what you’re fighting for,” he said. His family buzzed in the kitchen, eating a traditional Sudanese lunch of beans and tomatoes.Īhmed Mohamed stands in handcuffs at Irving police department in Irving, Texas on Monday. He sat on Thursday and pushed up his glasses so he could rub his eyes. What followed – three days’ suspension from school, and an arrest by Irving authorities before they closed the investigation – set in motion forces that Ahmed is now struggling to comprehend. The clock, typically, was a mess of wires and circuitry.

He used a broken USB cord and other spare parts to make a phone charger he could carry around during the day, while his friends’ phones conked out. Once, for instance, he waterproofed the electronics of a remote-controlled car so that it could run on land and underwater. A clock.Īs an object it wasn’t a beautiful thing, but his inventions never were. So he did what he would have done at his old school: he built something. He was just a lanky brown kid with thick-framed eyeglasses. Ahmed Mohamed tells reporters on Wednesday he’s thinking of changing schools GuardianĪ few weeks ago, though, he started his freshman year at MacArthur high school.
