Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old Muslim boy who grabbed national headlines after he was arrested for bringing a homemade clock to his Irving, Texas, high school, will be moving to the Middle East to attend school.
According to the Associated Press, Ahmed's family has accepted an offer from the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development to join its Young Innovators Program. Ahmed will attend high school and college in Doha, Qatar.
"We are going to move to a place where my kids can study and learn, and all of them being accepted by that country," Ahmed's father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, told the Dallas Morning News.
Ahmed visited Qatar shortly after his Sept. 14 arrest made headlines. He has also visited Google and Facebook headquarters, and on Monday, Ahmed and his family were guests of the Obamas at the White House, where he attended an Astronomy Night event and chatted with the president. On Tuesday the family made a brief stop at the U.S. Capitol before hopping a plane back to Texas.
AP notes that Ahmed and his family did not say when they planned to make the move, but that Ahmed told AP "he was impressed with the program and thinks he'll 'learn a lot and have fun, too.' "
On Sept. 14, Ahmed brought a clock that he'd made to school to show a teacher. A few other teachers believed the clock to be a bomb and they reported him to the principal. The principal called the police and Ahmed was handcuffed and questioned at a police station. He was released to his parents later that day.
The story of the arrest prompted many to believe that Ahmed was arrested because he is Muslim. Shortly after news spread, many on social media began posting photos of themselves with clocks under the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed.
Ahmed told AP that the lesson he has learned from all this is, "Don't judge a person by the way they look. Always judge them by their heart."
Read more at the Associated Press.