Maher made it clear that of course the Texas teen deserves an apology for being arrested over a clock, but said there’s nothing wrong with being a little suspicious when there’s a young Muslim student with something that “looks exactly like a fucking bomb” and there are young Muslims “blowing shit up” all over the world.
Young Muslims are not blowing shit up. Desperate, poor, creepative, religiously perverted, nihilistic people are blowing shit up, and Ahmed was none of these things. Had he written essays about how women are whores and the US is Satan and God is coming to fuck us all up, had he punched a teacher and binge-watched Osama’s YouTube channel, and THEN brought a weird-looking circuit board to school, okay. But he … came to school with a thing.
At which point, as numerous folks have pointed out, the principal did not evacuate the school or call the bomb squad and its robot detonators and dogs and stuff, so how real was this threat, and how much of this was about wanting to beat on a smart kid who was showing his invention off?
Maher’s an asshole who occasionally says smart things, which do not excuse his assholery. See also Dawkins, Richard.
A.