Mark Zuckerberg To Young Muslim Inventor: 'Keep Building'

The tech leader said Ahmed Mohamed's actions "should lead to applause, not arrest."

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had some touching words of encouragement for Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old inventor who was arrested earlier this week. The future, Zuckerberg wrote, belongs to people like you.

Ahmed, a ninth-grader at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas, brought in a homemade clock to show his teachers on Monday. Administrators responded by asking the Muslim teen, repeatedly, if he had tried to "make a bomb." Ahmed was eventually arrested by police and led from the school in handcuffs.

News of the incident has spread rapidly across the Internet, and he's received support from the likes of President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Zuckerberg's message encourages the young inventor to keep tinkering and, if he ever wants to see what a future in technology looks like, to stop by the Facebook offices.

At a press conference on Wednesday, the Irving Police Department said that it found no evidence of intent to create harm and that the case against Ahmed would be dropped.

But the inflammatory arrest could still prompt a lawsuit against the officials involved, said Alia Salem, director of the North Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

"They automatically jumped to a conclusion that I don't believe they would've jumped to, had he been 'Jimmy,'" she told HuffPost.

Close

What's Hot