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Barack Obama: NASA must try to make Muslims 'feel good'

The head of the Nasa has said Barack Obama told him to make "reaching out to the Muslim world" one of the space agency's top priorities.

By Toby Harnden in Washington
Published: 8:00PM BST 06 Jul 2010



Barack Obama wants Nasa to acknowledge Muslim achievements and contributions to science maths and engineering Photo: AFP/GETTY

Charles Bolden, a retired United States Marines Corps major-general and former astronaut, said in an interview with al-Jazeera that Nasa was not only a space exploration agency but also an "Earth improvement agency".

Mr Bolden said: "When I became the Nasa administrator, he [Mr Obama] charged me with three things.

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"One, he wanted me to help reinspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering."

He added: "It is a matter of trying to reach out and get the best of all worlds, if you will, and there is much to be gained by drawing in the contributions that are possible from the Muslim [nations]."

Byron York, a conservative columnist for the Washington Examiner, characterised Mr Obama's space policy shift as moving "from moon landings to promoting self-esteem"

Earlier this year, Mr Obama announced the scrapping of the moon programme in favour of an aspiration to visit Mars, cancelling the Constellation programme for manned space flight, the successor to the Space Shuttle.

It means Nasa would not be able to travel beyond the Earth's lower orbit without international assistance and need the help of allies to make it to Mars.

The proposal angered Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan, the first and last men to walk on the moon.

Along with Jim Lovell, the Apollo 13 commander, they issued a statement denouncing the decision "devastating" and a plan that "destines our nation to become one of second- or even third-rate stature."
President Obama Meets ‘Clock Kid’ Ahmed Mohamed During White House Astronomy Event


Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

by Charlie Spiering19 Oct 20151,312

In spite of the hubbub surrounding the appearance of “clock kid” Ahmed Mohamed at the White House, President Obama didn’t make him the center of attention during an event that was squarely focused on astronomy.

The president made brief remarks at the White House’s “Astronomy Night” before peering through a telescope and visiting briefly with a few of the attendees.

“We have to encourage those glimmers of curiosity,” Obama said during his remarks which highlighted the scientific curiosities of children around the country, but he did not refer to Mohamed’s experience.

According to the White House press pool, Ahmed Mohamed was in the third row of the audience.
White House reporters confirmed on Twitter that he spoke with Obama briefly as he shook the president’s hand.

In September, President Obama invited Mohamed to the White House after hearing about the event, posting an encouraging message to the student on Twitter.

Mohamed willingly accepted the invitation to visit Obama, tweeting afterwards that he couldn’t wait to get his clock back and show it to the president.

But the White House hinted on Monday that it was unlikely that Obama would personally visit with boy or look at his clock. “I don’t believe that the president will have the opportunity to meet with meet one-on-one with Ahmed Mohamed,” Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters.

In an interview with reporters this morning, Mohamed admitted that he didn’t bring his clock to Washington D.C. “because he’s been too busy traveling to pick it up from home,” according to the Dallas Morning News.

During his visit, he also attended a Council on American-Islamic Relations gala while he was in Washington D.C., according to the same report, and visited the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Since obtaining his newfound celebrity, the 14-year-old boy has been traveling the world visiting major tech groups and world leaders.

Just recently he posed for a photo with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, a known dictator accused of waging genocide in Darfur.



During his globetrotting, he also had the chance to visit Mecca with his family, as part of a Saudi government sponsored pilgrimage.

‘Clock kid’ Ahmed Mohamed boosts the Butcher of Darfur

By Post Editorial Board

October 19, 2015 | 7:58pm
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Irving MacArthur High School student Ahmed Mohamed, 14, at his home in Irving, Texas, on Sept. 15. Photo: Vernon Bryant/The Dallas Morning News via AP

Teen “clock-maker” Ahmed Mohamed’s tale just got a whole lot murkier.

Ever since his arrest last month, when teachers at his Texas school mistook his clockwork device for a bomb, 14-year-old Ahmed has been on a whirlwind global tour, feted as a victim of Islamophobia.

That was capped off last night by a visit to the White House at the personal Twitter invite of President Obama.

But it comes just days after Ahmed gleefully posed for pictures in Khartoum with Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

OK: Ahmed and his family are Sudanese immigrants; his dad has twice run for the nation’s presidency (despite being a US immigrant), including as recently as last February.

But Bashir is a mass-murdering warlord, indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

His atrocities have Sudan under US sanctions. Bashir was behind the genocide in Darfur — once a huge cause on the left.

In 2006, thousands gathered at the National Mall for a “Save Darfur” rally at which then-Sen. Barack Obama declared, “If we act, then the world will follow.” Now the latest cheerleader for the butcher of Darfur is a welcome guest at Obama’s White House?

All this is just the latest twist to this tale, which has seen the Council on American-Islamic Relations hail young Ahmed as “American Muslim of the Year.”

Questions have even surfaced about the device itself — now widely reported as just the inner workings of a commercial clock.
From the start, this affair was bound to be politicized. But the use Ahmed Mohamed and his family have made of his notoriety is appalling.


Did America Get Trolled By Ahmed And His Clock?

J. D. Gordon
Executive Director, Protect America Today
3:31 PM 09/21/2015

WFAA screenshot

It was the story that sparked outrage across America.

A bright 14-year old student brought a homemade clock into MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas to impress a teacher. But instead of earning praise for his engineering skills and innovation, he was handcuffed, hauled off by police and suspended from school.

Since he’s a dark-skinned Muslim, the political left cited it as evidence that America is a racist and xenophobic country. Just like they’ve said all along.

Thus the child prodigy became a national hero. VIP invites poured in, ranging from individuals like President Obama and Mark Zuckerburg to prestigious agencies and institutions such as NASA and MIT. So did generous donations.

But what if it was all a scam? Based on a hoax? Irving’s version of Ferguson’s infamous, “hands up, don’t shoot.”

Well, the more we learn about Ahmed Mohamed, his clock, family and friends, and most importantly this year’s bitter struggle between Muslim community leaders and Irving government officials over Sharia Law, it seems a certainty. No offense to Ahmed, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out.

Let’s start with the clock. It doesn’t remotely resemble one. No, it resembles a briefcase bomb. Photos show a vintage Radio Shack clock, dissembled and put back into a case, with a wire sticking out. Once it began beeping inside a back-pack, that’s when the trouble started. When police questioned young Ahmed, they said he was “passive aggressive,” stubbornly repeating it was a clock and stonewalling other questions. But here’s the thing, even if the Pope or Dalai Lama brought that device into a school, and then played games with teachers and police, they’d get arrested too.

Unfortunately, most people’s attention span started and ended with just the clock incident. As if it happened a vacuum. Poor Ahmed.

But there’s much more to this than meets the eye.

Turns out that Ahmed’s family and friends are activists and provocateurs. They’re front line warriors in battling so-called “Islamophobia,” a term coined by the Muslim Brotherhood and since used to silence any criticism of Muslims, no matter what they do. His dad, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed has engaged in publicity stunts before, like defending the Koran in Florida Pastor Terry Jones’ mock trial in 2010. In a 2011 television debate with Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch entitled, “Does Islam Respect Human Rights?” Mohamed identifies himself as President of Al-Sufi Islamic Center in Dallas and former presidential candidate of Sudan. It’s the country where the Muslim Janjaweed militia carried out genocide against non-Muslim black Africans in Darfur.

During the interview, after “correcting the record” that Islam does not abuse human rights, Mohamed tells us, “even when Prophet Mohammed used a sword, he used it like the doctor used a knife, to heal you and to cure you.” That’s reassuring.

Ahmed’s handlers include the Council on American Islamic Relations, a.k.a. CAIR, an organization founded by the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in the early 1990s to advance the Islamist agenda. To them, “if you see something, say something,” equals racism. What a great way to disarm America.

And now, we turn to Irving – America’s battleground in the clash over Islam’s Sharia Law.

Following an honor killing in which Egyptian taxi driver Yaser Said shot his two teen daughters Sarah and Amina in his cab because they became “too Westernized,” and refused arranged marriages including to man nearly triple in age, Irving officials took a hardline position to help stop repeats.

In March of this year, Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne made national news by pushing a Texas legislature bill, “American Laws for American Courts” which would stop judges from using foreign law in their rulings. She vocally opposed Sharia mediation at a local mega-mosque too. The Mayor knows that even under lenient interpretations, Sharia treats women and girls as property and thus prone to domestic abuse. In the most extreme cases, honor killings.

Well, guess who’s been out to get the Mayor ever since?

If you guessed Ahmed’s family, friends and CAIR, you’d be right.

So, enter the fresh faced, nerdy kid with the NASA shirt, who tinkers with go-carts and just wants to be an engineer someday. Hollywood couldn’t have cast him better. Just three weeks into high school, he secretly carries in a device that any TSA agent at airport security would think is a bomb. Then provokes police to get arrested, leaving the cuffs on just long enough for his sister to snap a photo.

My fellow Americans, we’ve been trolled. And if we don’t get wise to it, the next Ahmed may very well blow up his school. That’s the inevitable result of silencing teachers and disarming police. Time to face truth, or forever live with the consequences.

J.D. Gordon is a retired Navy Commander and former Pentagon spokesman who served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2005-2009.