Ahmed Mohamed
A legal team with the American Freedom Law Center has asked a federal court to dismiss two targets of a lawsuit by the Irving, Texas, “Clock Boy” from the case.
They also want reimbursement for their legal fees and the plaintiffs hit with a sanction that would “deter [them] and others from bringing similar actions in the future.”
“Clock Boy” is Ahmed Mohamed, who brought what AFLC called a “hoax clock bomb” to his Irving, Texas, middle school in September 2015, causing a bomb scare that led to his arrest and suspension from school. Legal cases have been filed against numerous defendants by his father, Mohamed Mohamed.
The new filing by AFLC alleges that the family created an incident from which to gain publicity, then sued over comments about that very publicity.
In “Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance,” renowned activist Pamela Geller provides proven practical guidance on how freedom lovers can stop jihadist initiatives in local communities.
“Later, Ahmed claimed the look-a-like briefcase bomb was just a ‘homemade clock.’ In reality it was neither a bomb nor a homemade clock, but a disassembled digital clock put in a small carrying case giving it the look of an improvised digital bomb or trigger for a bomb.”
The youth, after his arrest, held news conferences, was invited by President Obama to the White House, bragged about his overseas travels and then alerted reporters when he was returning to the United States. The Council on American Islamic Relations, which previously was cited in a terror-financing case, got involved in the publicity campaign.
Then he sued various media companies and personalities, such as Glenn Beck and the local Fox station, for commenting on the incident during their programs.
Among the targets of what critics of such legal fights have dubbed “lawfare” were Jim Hanson, a senior vice president with the Center for Security Policy, and the CSP.
Hanson, a former member of the U.S. Army Special Forces and an expert on counter-terrorism, was on Beck’s show when he “noted that the Clock Boy’s father had orchestrated an intense media campaign with the local chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (‘CAIR’), which the U.S. government has formally linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and to the designated terrorist organization Hamas in several formal court filings in federal terrorism cases,” AFLC said.
AFLC said Hanson “went on to explain that the entire affair had the look and feel of a typical ‘influence operation’ – the standard operating procedure of what the Muslim Brotherhood calls its ‘civilization jihad’ against the West.”
The new motion to dismiss the defendants from the case also seeks attorneys’ fees and sanctions.
“This lawsuit filed by Clock Boy’s father is yet another example of Islamist lawfare, which is a component of the Muslim Brotherhood’s civilization jihad,” said David Yerushalmi, senior counsel for AFLC.
“The Islamists employ the progressive mainstream media to label any public criticism of a Shariah-centric, jihad-driven Islam as ‘Islamophobic,’ and they add fear and financial ruin to the equation by utilizing the legal system to file SLAPP actions,” he said.
SLAPP, Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, is used to intimidate “into silence” those who disagree with Islam and Shariah, analysts explained.
“AFLC was formed in large measure to take on Islamists like CAIR who use and abuse the legal system with their cynical form of lawfare to undermine our constitutional liberties – notably free speech,” continued Robert Muise, a co-founder with Yerushalmi of AFLC. “We have confronted these lawsuits across the country in federal and state courts and have defeated CAIR and its minions at every turn. When appropriate, we have won sanctions. This lawsuit will be no different.”
The Washington Post reported the family sued the local school district, its principal and the city of Irving over alleged civil rights violations.
And WND reported last year when the family threatened a $15 million lawsuit if their demands were not met.
For a time after the episode blew up into a national incident, the teen moved to Qatar.
Mohamed claimed he moved in part because of “severe psychological trauma” from the school suspension, which was followed by a one-month world tour that included:
1. Honor by President Obama on social media and an invitation to the White House, where he meets the president Monday on the South Lawn at the astronomy event;
2. A meeting with Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, at a science fair;
3. Praise by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg;
4. Being named the beneficiary of a $20,000 fundraising campaign;
5. An invitation by a Canadian astronaut to visit;
6. An appearance with Dr. Oz;
7. Praise from MIT scientist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein for being “my ideal student”;
8. A proclamation by New York City of “Ahmed Day”;
9. A visit with Sudanese President Omar al Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for genocide.
10. A visit with Turkey’s Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu;
11. A trip to the Middle East during which, as the Huffington Post described it, he “hung with Jordan’s Queen Rania”;
12. A visit to Mecca as an honored guest of Saudi Arabia King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.
In “Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance,” renowned activist Pamela Geller provides proven practical guidance on how freedom lovers can stop jihadist initiatives in local communities.
After the school incident, his supporters immediately complained of “Islamophobia,” and his parents withdrew their children from the school district.
But Islam expert Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch contends there was nothing anti-Islam about the incident, suggesting instead that Mohamed stepped into the snake pit of fears concerning school violence.
“Would Ahmed Mohamed’s clock have been suspicious if he were a white Methodist, and would he have been arrested anyway? Without any doubt. But his arrest has become an opportunity for the purveyors of the Muslims-as-victims myth … to push hard on their spurious and insidious claim that Muslims are suffering from unwarranted scrutiny, including counter-terror programs, which should accordingly be relaxed or scrapped altogether.”
Spencer posted side-by-side images of a real bomb and Mohamed’s project, stating, with irony, “You’re an Isamophobe if you can’t tell the difference.”
Illustration from Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch showing Mohamed’s “clock” and a real bomb