LeadershipAhmed Mohamed

#IStandWithAhmed: Arrested 14-year-old gains presidential support

By Benjamin SnyderManaging Editor
Benjamin SnyderManaging Editor

Benjamin Snyder is Fortune's managing editor, leading operations for the newsroom.

Prior to rejoining Fortune, he was a managing editor at Business Insider and has worked as an editor for Bloomberg, LinkedIn and CNBC, covering leadership stories, sports business, careers and business news. He started his career as a breaking news reporter at Fortune in 2014.

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Texas Muslim Student Clock
This photo provided by the Irving Police Department shows the homemade clock that Ahmed Mohamed brought to school, Wednesday, Sept.16, 2015, in Irving. Police detained the 14-year-old Muslim boy after a teacher at MacArthur High School decided that the homemade clock he brought to class looked like a bomb, according to school and police officials. The family of Ahmed Mohamed said the boy was suspended for three days from the school in the Dallas suburb. (Irving Police via AP)
Photograph by AP

Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old Muslim student from Irving, Texas, was proud of the clock (pictured above) he built to bring to class. But instead of being praised by his teachers, he was handcuffed because they suspected it was a bomb to blow up the place.

Now, some of the top leaders in the U.S. are coming forward on social media to show their support, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Mark Zuckerberg. #IStandWithAdhmed, meanwhile, is a top trending hashtag on Twitter as of Wednesday afternoon.

“They arrested me and they told me that I committed the crime of a hoax bomb, a fake bomb,” the freshman later said to WFAA.

“She was like, it looks like a bomb,” he told the Dallas News about the principal’s decision. He added, “It doesn’t look like a bomb to me.”

Here’s a round-up of just some of those reactions.

Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, took to his social media site to add his two cents.

You’ve probably seen the story about Ahmed, the 14 year old student in Texas who built a clock and was arrested when he took it to school.
Having the skill and ambition to build something cool should lead to applause, not arrest. The future belongs to people like Ahmed.
Ahmed, if you ever want to come by Facebook, I’d love to meet you. Keep building.

Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Hillary Clinton, a top contender for the Democratic nomination for president tweeted about the incident.

President Barack Obama also tweeted about the incident, offering Ahmed an invitation to the White House:

Others, too, took to the Internet to show their support:

https://twitter.com/BUCKVBVRNES/status/644144433571753985