Somehow I agree with syag when she chastised someone else 🙂 the lesson learned is that everyone fills in the blanks with assumptions. In this case, it was a simple fact, other cases might be more subtle and stay undetected, reinforcing biases even further. I was also confused by lack of a location, so suspended judgment until I saw the references.
I don’t suggest the boy to break shabbat at all. My first idea is to make it public by just coming there. Separate suggestion to do experiments that might be allowed might be wrong in this case when Muslims did not change the rules, so this became an issue of principle rather than pure melocha