DallasNews: Before Ahmed’s fame: fantastic inventions

DallasNews: Before Ahmed’s fame: fantastic inventions and a fight with authority which reveals this is a precocious kid with a history of disruptive incidents resulting in detentions and eventual suspension from school ...a few choice quotes:

"When a seemingly possessed projector kept shutting off midlecture, young boys’ snickers surrounded Ahmed’s desk, where he sat with a hand-built remote control in his lap.

Talkative to a point of disruption to class, Ahmed..."...tried to get out of detention by reciting the First Amendment in the principal’s office. ... While his discipline record is confidential and his father didn’t want to discuss it, the file was thick by some accounts.

Ahmed said he was suspended for several weeks in sixth grade. A family friend, Anthony Bond, said the boy and a cousin were blowing soap bubbles in the bathroom, and the school overreacted.

Color me skeptical...blowing bubbles doesn't result in multiple week suspensions. I'd like to know more ...perhaps they tried to flush the soap and created an expensive mess to clean up?

"Ahmed blamed an administrator at the school who, Bond wrote, the boy felt “has been terrorizing him since the 6th grade” — hindering him from praying in school and unfairly punishing him." ... "Bond’s letter called the boy’s treatment “Muslim bashing”


"Bertha Whatley, who was Irving ISD’s attorney last year, said “high-level” officials at the district reviewed Bond’s letter. Bond said the principal overturned the suspension after meeting with Ahmed".


"...“I told you one day I’m going to be — and you told me yourself — I’m going to be really big on the Internet one day,” Ahmed said."

*****appears the kid is easily manipulated and ill advised about media celebrity. Any trauma was self inflicted and encouraged by the people he trusted most.