Ahmed Mohamed Revisited

Those among you that remember who Ahmed Mohamed is, kudo's to you. For the rest of you, a quick refresher: he was the 14 year old Texas ninth grader who got arrested and questioned after building a clock for his science project.

_{Image by kalhh - source: Pixabay}

Today at work I got sick, I literally wanted to throw up, and would have if circumstances permitted it; I had to swallow hard. I'll try hard to stay cohesive, but what follows is more a rant than anything else; treat it as such please. Still, as always I'll also try to connect the dots of the picture as I see it, and hope there's something for you to take away.

The sick feeling in my stomach was caused by something I heard some colleagues talk about: they have Facebook and were witness to some of the terrible shooting incident in New Zealand. If you missed this, the video at the halfway point in this post will fill you in, but it was horrible. A self-proclaimed white supremacist in cold blood killed 49 Muslims. What I heard (the video is removed now, and I don't care to search for it on other platforms), the shooter made sure that victims that were still moving got treated to one extra shot in the head. Women, children, elderly people, everyone and anyone visiting the Friday prayer were slaughtered like animals.

This is enough to make anyone sick, but not me; mass shootings are so common now, aren't they? And New Zealand is so far away, isn't it? No, that didn't make me lose it. It was when one of my colleagues said: "would you look at these comments" and he started reading some out loud. That's when my stomach turned... "They had this coming", "serves them good", "they're all animals anyway", and even worse were a large part of the comments. I've seen perfectly reasonable people around me vote for the "anti-establishment" candidate, Wilders here in The Netherlands, Trump in the U.S., Nigel Farage in England and so on. This vote is almost always born from an extreme disappointment in "politics as usual", in the establishment, which is understandable, and is to be encouraged even on a certain level.

The problem with this kind of populism however, is that all these populists hold an extremist nationalist viewpoint; they all blame the establishment for the mass-immigration they perceive to be at the heart of their problems. Especially Muslims are targeted as the scapegoat due to a string of Muslim terrorist attacks around the western world, like 9/11, London, Paris... Horrible acts like the one in New Zealand today, and the terrible comments these acts solicit, are made possible by the continuous dehumanization of Muslims. And that brings us back to Ahmed Mohamed.

_{49 dead in New Zealand terror shooting: two mosques attacked}

I'll just quote from the Washington Post article published September 18, in the aftermath of the completely rediculous arrest of 14 year old Ahmed:

"When 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed brought a homemade clock to school, he probably expected accolades, not arrest. But that’s what happened to the ninth grader, who was pulled out of class, questioned by police then brought (in handcuffs) to the station for fingerprinting and questioning. He wasn’t even allowed to call his parents."

[...]

"Dehumanization is a phenomenon by which people see others as somehow “less than human.” Psychologists have linked this perception with everything from perceiving others as primitive and backward to seeing the dehumanized as savage, and aggressive."

"Muslims, we found, are the most readily dehumanized groups. Our American participants rated Muslims about 12-15 points lower than Americans on our scale (they were rated over 20 points lower in a smaller sample of British participants). Consistent with the idea that dehumanization is driven by a sense of threat, we found that dehumanization of Arabs was greater in the days after the Boston Marathon attacks."

"Most importantly, dehumanization is associated with less sympathy and more aggression. For example, in one study, we gave participants a story about two children (one Arab, one white) caught shoplifting in a store. The police detained the Arab child but sent the white child home. Those who dehumanized Arabs and Muslims were less likely to feel sympathy towards the Arab child. Even more troublingly, we observed that dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims was associated with supporting highly aggressive policies such as drone strikes in the Middle East and torture of Arabs and Muslims."
_{source: The Washington Post}

From the 2016 study Backlash: The Politics and Real-World Consequences of Minority Group Dehumanization:

"Research suggests that members of advantaged groups who feel dehumanized by other groups respond aggressively. But little is known about how meta-dehumanization affects disadvantaged minority group members, historically the primary targets of dehumanization. We examine this important question in the context of the 2016 U.S. Republican Primaries, which have witnessed the widespread derogation and dehumanization of Mexican immigrants and Muslims. Two initial studies document that Americans blatantly dehumanize Mexican immigrants and Muslims; this dehumanization uniquely predicts support for aggressive policies proposed by Republican nominees, and dehumanization is highly associated with supporting Republican candidates (especially Donald Trump). Two further studies show that, in this climate, Latinos and Muslims in the United States feel heavily dehumanized, which predicts hostile responses including support for violent versus non-violent collective action and unwillingness to assist counterterrorism efforts. Our results extend theorizing on dehumanization, and suggest that it may have cyclical and self-fulfilling consequences."
_{source: SAGE Journals}

This case of Ahmed is just one of the many signs we've had, indicating that Muslims are being dehumanized all over the western world. One of the saddest aspects to this development is that this not only leads to the clash of cultures, but a clash within each of the affected cultures, with the ultimate result that the use of violence is accepted more readily on both sides; the terrorists are winning, not once, but twice. The "war against terrorism" couldn't have had any other outcome, and anyone with an inkling of historical awareness knew this in advance. It's still hard for me to keep focused; anger, sadness and a feeling of utter helplessness haven't left my body and soul just yet. So, I apologize for the somewhat ranty and maybe one-sided nature of this post.

Just to remind myself, and all of you, that it's still possible to turn this around, to take away only the good and discard the bad, please watch the heartwarming response of Ahmed after he was released:

_{Texas teen Ahmed Mohamed thanks his supporters - Daily Mail}

And the aftermath of this will bring more restrictions on freedom everywhere; the press is demanding stricter rules to prevent terrorist acts like this being broadcast life on Facebook, some reporters demanding that they stop it in advance, others demanding to know why the shooter wasn't on any "watch list"... Bring in the police state, please, is what they're asking. It's madness...

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