So it's "if you see something, say something (unless the person is Arab or Black because then you'll be called a racist or islamophobic or whatever by the divider in chief)."?

Got it.

And anyone who thinks that this wasn't the actual outcome that his father was aiming to get from this media circus is kidding themselves.  Well orchestrated.

Bravo! Nails it. Another case of an Islamic father manipulating his children to gain political capital and sympathy from western dunderheads. All about framing a conversation and shifting perceptions to your favor. It's worked so well that the white western world now wants to put Jews back into ovens because of the poor oh-so innocent Palestinians and Arabs. These are the only people I've ever seen in the world that use babies and children as human shields. Literally carrying babies strapped to them like a piece of body armor. "Hey Jamal, where should we set up the sniper's nest and bomb factory?" "Well Khaled, let's just use the kindergarten or the children's hospital like we always do?" I hope this isn't the case here of juvenile manipulation, but I'm skeptical given past events.

Here's the other problem I have with this kid and his potential motives. He showed it to his engineering teacher, teacher says it's fine, just put it away so no one else sees it. Except....somehow....the alarm has been set to go off during the middle of one of his next classes. Really? Project over, clock turned in, teacher says put it away. Yet somehow, the device remains powered on and an alarm has been set to go off. Couple that with being 9/11 and a Muslim and the notion of randomness quickly drops. Maybe some of the folks over at Innerfidelity could do the statistical probability of all those random events occurring at the same time.

I would be interviewing the Engineering teacher to ask him if he remembers the alarm still being enabled during his inspection or not. If the alarm had been set after the project was turned in to deliberately make a political statement, the kid needs to be expelled and father prosecuted/fined.

Guys, the kid is 14.  Remember when you were 14?  Were you smart enough to predict the actions of adults to something other then black and white situations? 

No, I certainly wasn't smart enough to have good judgement at that age and I paid for it.

There was situation when I was 13 where I should have approached the school officials instead of fighting. I was trying to go home, but a well known bully blocked by path to my bicycle across the street outside of school grounds. I tried to avoid fighting, but he kept blocking my way saying stuff like "chink, pussy, chink, china-man, etc."

He eventually took a swing at me so I had to fight back. He wore braces, and all I did was pull off a Floyd Mayweather by keeping away with left jabs to his mouth. He fell down a few times. The other kids witnessing the fight got mad that I didn't kick him in the face when he was down. A neighbor finally stopped the fight and sent the bully home.

I took my time collecting my books. During this time, I was stopped by a school administrator (the fight did not take place on school grounds). I was suspended for three days. The only reason the cops weren't called was because this was the early 80s.

Oh the injustice! How I wish the Huffington Post could have plead my case, exaggerated the wrongs against me so Reagan could invite me to the White House. What I took away from this was it sucked to be me and that I should have demonstrated better judgement. And oh no, my dad did not let that slide - it was totally my fault because at any point along that path, I could have chosen to not that course.

-

I can tell you another story when the cops were called. Now this cop (Irish/Italian) actually said some nasty racist shit. This was in San Jose, CA too. The 80s were really different though.

If he had taken this to school (which you can simply buy in  a store) would that be a no-no in the US ?

Absolutely!

Funny story: I was in high school when Columbine happened, and man, shit changed. I was young and very pissed at the time about my perception of freedom lost. Fast forward to my mid-twenties when I was in Paris-CDG for the first time. I was gifted a perspective shift. That place was crawling with armed badasses: assault rifles, dogs, and nasty looks. I don't mean that as a fuck-you to France either, I totally get why they were there, it just made me reassess a lot of my ideas about safety and security measures.

Now, back to Ahmed for a moment, I do have an issue with the response if his project was a) known about in advance of that day, b) part of an assignment, and c) seen by a teacher that day, who did not report it when he saw it (meaning someone within "the school" knew conclusively it was not a dangerous item). Those facts tend to make less reasonable Ahmed's later detention, arrest, etc.