On Monday of last week, an article entitled “Islamophobia and the White moderate” by Osama El-Gabalawy appeared in The Stanford Daily in response to my article on the arrest of Ahmed Mohamed. In his article, Mr. El-Gabalawy claims that the opinion I expressed “obstructs our pursuit of justice,” framing his argument through a quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. concerning the White moderate. It is the White moderate, Dr. King asserts, “who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’”
This comparison of the opinion expressed in my original article to the sentiment of the White moderate in Dr. King’s quotation is incorrect. In fact, Mr. El-Gabalawy’s dismissal of my request for evidence showing how Islamophobia played a role in Ahmed’s arrest is antithetical to the approach employed by Dr. King and other activists during the Civil Rights era.
To claim that I am analogous to the White moderate referred to in Dr. King’s quote is quite absurd. The White moderate sought to prevent a subjugated people from causing too much tension or unrest within society. I do not promote this at all, and I think that it is despicable to imply that I personally value some vague concept of “order” in society over the struggle for equality. All I have done is point out that the claim that Ahmed’s arrest was Islamophobic in nature is unsubstantiated, which is far different from advising social justice advocates to “wait for a more convenient season.”
As I state in my original column, it is vastly important that advocates of a social movement ensure that the examples of injustice they provide be validated. If you as the reader consider this a foolish assertion, then I invite you to imagine how the Civil Rights movement would have swayed the White moderate had Martin Luther King, Jr. relied on instances where racism was not visibly the primary factor for his examples of injustice. The power that came with the organization of the Civil Rights movement was directly fueled by the clarity and pervasiveness of the examples of injustice they exposed. This is why I ask to be shown how the event is discriminatory in nature before accepting such a claim.
However, Mr. El-Gabalawy states that my request for evidence that Ahmed was a victim of Islamophobia “will never be met because the issue at its core is not a lack of evidence, but a lack of acknowledgement of evidence.” He then frames my argument by saying: “Ahmed’s actions provoked the teacher’s response, but that same line of logic resulted in the acquittal of the police officers who mauled Rodney King on video, inciting the LA riots.” This is an unfounded analogy. The use of excessive force against Rodney King was clearly unjustified given video evidence. The same cannot be said for Ahmed’s arrest, for which there is no convincing evidence that finding his device suspicious was unjustified in the context of zero-tolerance policies. Despite this, Mr. El-Gabalawy requests that I “indulge the Muslim community with a link between evidence and justice,” which I am happy to demonstrate.
It is a problem when the examples we use to point to an injustice are dubious. Dr. King knew this, which is why he used non-violent protest to demonstrate great injustices against Black Americans; when the protesters marched at Selma in 1965, they were met with intense police brutality. This shocking violence was televised and so apparent to its viewers that it became impossible for the White moderate to deny or write off the severity of the suffering endured by Black people. However, the case of Ahmed Mohamed does not reflect such clarity. There are strong examples of injustice against Muslims. It just so happens that the arrest of Ahmed Mohamed is not one of them, as there is discernible room for doubt that Ahmed’s device was considered suspicious specifically because he is Muslim, which I discuss at length in my original article.
I will try to address the other major points that Mr. El-Gabalawy makes in his article. First, he expresses concern that the police did not evacuate the school but rather placed Ahmed in a room alone with his device. As the Irving Police Department discusses in its press release, Ahmed was held on suspicion of possessing a hoax bomb, which does not necessitate evacuation as it is a waste of time and resources. The duty of police in the case of a hoax bomb is to assess whether the suspect intended their possession to cause alarm. Ahmed was assessed not to have intended to cause alarm and thereafter released without charge, so there is no discrepancy in procedure. Next, Mr. El-Gabalawy notes that minority students are disproportionately more likely to be affected by zero-tolerance policies. This is true, but Mr. El-Gabalawy fails to clarify that the study he provides only focuses on how Black and Hispanic students in particular are affected, while Muslim Americans and other groups are not mentioned. As for the reported comment of a police officer on the scene, this occurred after the police were already called and therefore does not indicate Islamophobia affecting the suspicions of the school officials. If the officer made such a statement, it reflects on his personal bias and not that of the school officials, which is the matter at hand.
Mr. El-Gabalawy goes on to claim that “several cases have been documented where students brought homemade clocks to school without incident,” linking readers to an article which claims to provide five instances where seven students who built clocks were not judged suspicious. However, the article and Mr. El-Gabalawy both fail to acknowledge that these students all built their clocks as projects for science fairs and contained no electronic parts, with the exception of one student who built an electronic clock as part of her “industrial tech” class. These instances are far different from Ahmed’s case, in that he self-admittedly brought his clock to school for his own purposes and not for any school-related function, such as a science fair. Ahmed also showed the clock to his engineering teacher, who complimented him on his work but then told him to put it away and not show it to anyone else. This implies that Ahmed’s device was at least somewhat suspicious in appearance, as his teacher did not want Ahmed to cause alarm by carrying around a box of electronic parts that had no school-related purpose. By comparing Ahmed’s case to these wholly irrelevant instances, Mr. El-Gabalawy is falsely obfuscating the facts that explain why Ahmed’s device seemed suspicious to school officials and therefore misleading his readers.
Mr. El-Gabalawy also criticizes me for disapproving of the fact that Ahmed was invited to Facebook, Google, and the White House, stating that these facts are “irrelevant.” Perhaps I was not fully clear in my reason for mentioning this. The purpose in doing so was to point out that such publicity stunts further compound Ahmed’s status as the poster child of victims of Islamophobia by treating him as such. Such a status, in my mind, should be unquestionable. There should be no ambiguities in that person’s victimhood. So, when we treat Ahmed’s arrest as the prime example of Islamophobia in the U.S., it does damage by leaving too much room for doubt where there should be none. Therefore, I hold that Ahmed’s promotion in media is certainly relevant, as it further denigrates the cause of achieving religious equality by trivializing what constitutes discrimination. So, if Mr. Gabalawy still shames me for advising that the power of social media be used more cautiously, I recommend he research its significance in the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement as just one example.
Another point that I’d like to make is that it is, of course, entirely possible for a Muslim American student to be unfairly suspected of possessing a bomb. However, it is not unreasonable to expect such a situation to have evidence showing how Islamophobia played a role. A reasonable standard of evidence would be along the lines of whether the Muslim student was singled out for doing something that other non-Muslim students do as well. For example, if non-Muslim students brought a device similar to Ahmed’s to the same school without consequence, then that would constitute evidence that Islamophobic sentiment played a role. There is no instance of this in Ahmed’s case. Perhaps if Ahmed merely brought his clock to school as part of a school project, then that would also be evidence of discrimination, as there would be no reason to consider Ahmed’s possession of his device suspicious. However, this was also not the case. Acknowledging trends of discrimination is one thing. To point to an individual event and decry it as Islamophobic in nature without due evidence is fundamentally different, as any statistician will agree.
I think there is another issue related to Ahmed’s arrest that remains largely unaddressed. Historically victimized communities are not exempt from standards of evidence when they make claims. I must stand by this belief, as it is indeed possible to elucidate the severity of discrimination without relying too much on disputable examples. As I mentioned, there is precedent for this. Therefore, I do not believe it is too radical for me to suggest that we use more discernible examples of injustice against Muslim Americans lest the integrity of the movement for religious equality become muddied. If we use Ahmed’s arrest as our example, then we no longer care about convincing people. If we do not care about convincing people, then we do not care about effectively improving the situation.
This is why I contend that Ahmed Mohamed should not be hailed an icon of the fight against Islamophobia. I advise those who disagree with my contention to seriously ask themselves what reason they have to believe that Ahmed’s school involving the authorities was Islamophobic in nature given the context of zero-tolerance policies. Unless they can answer this question, they have failed on a fundamental level of critical thinking. But what do I know? I’m just a White Liberal.
Contact Ian Knight at isknight ‘at’ stanford.edu.