Always make the teacher happy and do what they say.” Be a good Muslim boy and respect your elders. Try to be a doctor or an engineer, don’t get involved with politics and don’t talk to anyone about controversial things like religion. Don’t cause any trouble or bring any attention to yourself. We have opportunity here that we did not have back home. You should be thankful that we are in America and they let us into their country. Don’t make any excuses, no matter how bad you are treated. I can almost hear the things they have been saying to Ahmed during his upbringing (like my parents and others in our community always said): Ahmed’s parents and family remind me of all the “uncles” and “aunties” of my community that were all around me on a daily basis. He reminds me of all the beautiful kids that I always see running around at any mosques I visit. In seeing Ahmed through the media, he reminds me of myself when I was a kid as well as so many of my friends, cousins, nieces and nephews who were all children of South Asian Muslim immigrants. What a horrible experience for a child to be accused of creating a bomb when simply seeking the approval of your engineering teacher for building a clock at home.

When I learned about the recent experience of 9th grader Ahmed Mohamed being arrested and interrogated by police without his parents present in Irvine, Texas, I was angry and deeply sympathetic. I know plenty about the experience of being racially profiled with a name that causes significant suspicion by law enforcement and others in our society. As a Muslim with Ahmed in my name, I am acutely aware of how much it sucks to be a brown guy with my name in post-9/11 America.

Nice clock ahmed donald trump