{"id":133,"date":"2014-01-21T01:03:20","date_gmt":"2014-01-21T01:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/?p=133"},"modified":"2014-01-21T01:03:20","modified_gmt":"2014-01-21T01:03:20","slug":"episode-22-sami-rasouli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/episode-22-sami-rasouli\/","title":{"rendered":"Episode 22 – Sami Rasouli"},"content":{"rendered":"

City of Residence:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Minneapolis, MN<\/p>\n

Occupation:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Restaurateur<\/p>\n

Excerpt:<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Well, I am an Iraqi-American who feels that as I am Iraqi 100% and American\u00a0100%, that makes me 200% human being. And that goes beyond all the labels.<\/p>\n

Because I am an American, an Iraqi equally and because I am a human being above\u00a0everything, when the war started against Iraq in 2003, I felt the war actually started\u00a0within me\u2014Sami the American is attacking Sami the Iraqi, and Sami the Iraqi is\u00a0reacting violently against Sami the American and its state of violence and war. So I\u00a0couldn\u2019t take it, especially when I sit down in my living room receiving the news as\u00a0we do now, watching what\u2019s happening in Cairo, I was watching what\u2019s happening in\u00a0Iraq at that time and the news was bringing me really sad news that hundreds and\u00a0hundreds of Iraqis are killed every day. So I couldn\u2019t work at my place, I couldn\u2019t eat\u00a0or sleep; within 12 months I decided to go back to do something as a way of healing.\u00a0And I formed successfully Muslim peacemaker teams in Najaf, where we could build\u00a0ties between communities, extend bridges between Shia and Sunnis to remind them\u00a0that we are one and if the invasion and the agenda of the occupation should divide\u00a0us, we should be aware of that and we should peacefully resist.<\/p>\n

And also, creating the Muslim peacemaker teams in Iraq inspired group of people\u00a0here\u2014just we talking about Kathy McKay who was very much interested to form the\u00a0IARP 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\u2014help to\u00a0support the work of MPT in Iraq\u2014the Muslim Peacemaker Teams\u2014and also to\u00a0reconcile between Iraqis and the Americans aftermath the war\u2014after the war and\u00a0the destruction. So when Najaf and Minneapolis became sister cities, we were be\u00a0able to bring delegates from Najaf to here and from Minneapolis to Najaf for the last\u00a0two years.<\/p>\n

One thing proved that hosting, like Americans hosting Iraqis, just like infidels\u00a0hosting terrorists and when they sit down face to face, looking in the eyes and\u00a0breaking that bread and Wisconsin cheese together, they found out no, that terrorist\u00a0concept and infidel concept just stereotype. There is no place\u2014it\u2019s a hoax, it\u2019s a\u00a0myth and we should continue to meet as people to people and implement that\u00a0people-to-people diplomacy.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Podcast Preview:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\"Play\"<\/a><\/object>\n<\/div>\n

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

Podcast (full length):<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\"Play\"<\/a><\/object>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

City of Residence: Minneapolis, MN Occupation: Restaurateur Excerpt: “Well, I am an Iraqi-American who feels that as I am Iraqi 100% and American\u00a0100%, 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\u00a0everything, when the war …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":136,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ep","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions\/137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irgmn.org\/muslimexperience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}