City of Residence:
Minneapolis, MN
Occupation:
Restaurateur
Excerpt:
“Well, I am an Iraqi-American who feels that as I am Iraqi 100% and American 100%, that makes me 200% human being. And that goes beyond all the labels.
Because I am an American, an Iraqi equally and because I am a human being above everything, when the war started against Iraq in 2003, I felt the war actually started within me—Sami the American is attacking Sami the Iraqi, and Sami the Iraqi is reacting violently against Sami the American and its state of violence and war. So I couldn’t take it, especially when I sit down in my living room receiving the news as we do now, watching what’s happening in Cairo, I was watching what’s happening in Iraq at that time and the news was bringing me really sad news that hundreds and hundreds of Iraqis are killed every day. So I couldn’t work at my place, I couldn’t eat or sleep; within 12 months I decided to go back to do something as a way of healing. And I formed successfully Muslim peacemaker teams in Najaf, where we could build ties between communities, extend bridges between Shia and Sunnis to remind them that we are one and if the invasion and the agenda of the occupation should divide us, we should be aware of that and we should peacefully resist.
And also, creating the Muslim peacemaker teams in Iraq inspired group of people here—just we talking about Kathy McKay who was very much interested to form the IARP as an echo for Muslim peacemaker teams in Iraq. And the IARP is the Iraqi-American Reconciliation Project that was founded to help the work of—help to support the work of MPT in Iraq—the Muslim Peacemaker Teams—and also to reconcile between Iraqis and the Americans aftermath the war—after the war and the destruction. So when Najaf and Minneapolis became sister cities, we were be able to bring delegates from Najaf to here and from Minneapolis to Najaf for the last two years.
One thing proved that hosting, like Americans hosting Iraqis, just like infidels hosting terrorists and when they sit down face to face, looking in the eyes and breaking that bread and Wisconsin cheese together, they found out no, that terrorist concept and infidel concept just stereotype. There is no place—it’s a hoax, it’s a myth and we should continue to meet as people to people and implement that people-to-people diplomacy.”
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