It will be some time before it’s clear whether the story of Ahmed Muhammad, aka “clock boy,” has a happy ending. After being arrested last month under suspicion of bringing a bomb disguised as a clock to his Texas high school, the 14-year-old won the world’s sympathy, a scholarship fund, gifts, letters from business executives, meetings with world leaders, including the president of the United States, and now a free high school and college education in that blossoming center of innovative science and technology—Qatar. “It’s basically like America,” said Ahmed’s 18-year-old sister, Eyman.
Of course, the tiny Gulf emirate that hosts the world’s leading anti-American satellite network Al Jazeera is nothing like America. Unlike America, for instance, Qatar produces only one thing—natural gas, which it would be incapable of producing or getting to market without Western technology. Qatar’s financial resources have allowed it to import all of its prestige from the West, including museums, the 2022 soccer World Cup, and of course U.S. educational institutions. In short, Qatar is a vulgar parody of America and other Western societies.
Talented students from the Gulf Arab states are typically sent to America because their parents know that education in the Gulf region is unlikely to help them win a real job in the international market. Saudi Arabia, for instance, tends to value engineers no more than students who memorize the Quran. Of course, competing for jobs isn’t that much of a problem for many Gulf natives since if they want to work, and hardly all do, they can count on family connections securing them an easy sinecure in some bureaucracy. Or they can just stay at home, collecting free petro-checks, and waking late in the afternoon only in time to wander the shopping malls.
But none of those options are available to Ahmed because he has two very big strikes against him—he’s a foreigner and he’s black. In the intensely hierarchical scheme of Gulf sheikhdoms, this puts Ahmed somewhere on the pecking order only a little bit above the Asian guest workers, who the Qataris treat like farm animals. In time, Ahmed and his siblings will learn that Qatar isn’t like America at all.
It’s hard not to feel sorry for the boy. The family’s announcement of their decision to move to Qatar, a day after meeting with Obama, suggests that the episode was part of some bizarre scam engineered by Ahmed’s father, Mohamed al-Hassan Mohamed. As our friends at Powerline have shown in their excellent coverage of the story, it’s pretty clear that Ahmed’s clock was designed to look and sound just like what the boy’s teacher and the Irving, Texas police department believed it was—a bomb. Given that many Americans are apparently willing to tear up the second amendment for fear of teenage psychopaths opening fire on their classmates, it’s hard to see how the police overreacted by bringing the boy downtown for questioning.
The interesting part was how another storyline trumped the school shooter narrative—Islamophobia. To wit: Ahmed’s teacher and the police weren’t concerned he was some adolescent loser looking to murder as many people as possible with an explosive device, they’re just racists who think that every Muslim is basically a Bin Laden biding his time. By playing the two narratives against each other, Ahmed’s father, perhaps unintentionally, highlighted something disturbing about the country he is leaving for Qatar—the Americans say how much they love their children, but threaten to expose them as racists and you can put them in a hard place.
Anyway, it wasn’t a real bomb. No one got hurt. We just got played for suckers, especially Obama. It’s instructive that the president of the United States got played worse than anyone since it’s a typically American story, in spite of the Middle Eastern flavor.
Some have conjectured, perhaps wildly, that Ahmed’s father is working on behalf of Islamist parties. Who knows? The reality is that the episode won him a meeting with major Islamist figures, like the prime minister of Turkey, Ahmet Davutoglu and the president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir. In fact, Mohamed al-Hassan Mohamed wanted to challenge Bashir for the presidency in the 2010 elections, but the Butcher of Darfur, as the accused war criminal who has ruled Sudan since 1989 is popularly known, wouldn’t have it. Did Mohamed’s political aspirations set the clock-scam in motion? Well, now he’s got personal contacts—and photographs!—with an impressive roster of world leaders. And his son is a role model—persecuted by racist Americans and welcomed back to the region by adoring fans. How is Bashir going to prevent a hero’s father from running for office next time out? Surely, he’s in line for a ministerial position—and the money that will follow as a consequence.
Still, like I said, it’s an American story. Ahmed’s father is above all a con man. Who knows exactly what he intended, but any hustler worthy of the name knows that if you want to win you have to play. Set things in motion and see how it turns out. As Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op put it: “Plans are all right sometimes … And sometimes just stirring things up is all right—if you’re tough enough to survive, and keep your eyes open so you’ll see what you want when it comes to the top.”
American folklore as well as our classic literature—from Herman Melville through Hammett and down to David Mamet—makes plain a simple fact: No one is ever conned against their will. Rather, the victim’s vanity is the central ingredient in the confidence scheme. And that’s why it was so easy to play the president. Did he really have to tweet an invitation to Ahmed to come to the White House before he knew the whole story? As Ricky Roma says in Glengarry Glen Ross, “you never open your mouth till you know what the shot is.” And why after Ahmed and his family met with Bashir didn’t Obama rescind the invitation? __What’s this kid doing meeting with a mass murderer? Tell Ahmed he’s not at this time welcome to visit the White House.__
Obama didn’t walk away because he never does, not from Ahmed and his father and not from the Iranians over the nuclear deal. He says he’s got as much to worry about as anyone with the nuclear deal since his name is on it. And that’s precisely the issue—he doesn’t understand the cards and the chips he holds, and the chair he sits in, are not his. Rather, he is risking the interests and the prestige of the country he was elected to lead for the sake of his own vanity. Yes the president is very vain, which is what makes him such an easy mark, every time.