Sami Rasouli is back, touting peace for Iraq (2/25/2005)

Published in Star Tribune on February 25, 2006 by Doug Grow His words and hands are moving faster and faster. So much to say -- so little time. He touches. He gestures. And constantly, the speed increases. Sami Rasouli is back in the U.S.A., where he had it made. He owned Sinbad's, a restaurant on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis that a local magazine in 2001 declared the finest eatery on Eat Street. He was on the magazine's cover, wearing a red fez and a big smile. He had U.S. citizenship, a Lincoln Continental, a house in the suburbs, three kids. Not to mention electricity, drinkable water, heat, air-conditioning, and little concern for explosive devices underfoot. "I had the life people in Iraq want," he said. And in November of 2004 he pitched it all and moved back to Iraq, the land of his birth. "The war, the destruction, the sad faces," he said. "I felt guilty. I felt like I wasn't doing my share. That was the country that gave me my birth. I had to do something." The 54-year-old businessman has become the peacemaker. In his hometown, Najaf, he started an organization called Muslim Peacemaker Teams, modeled on the Christian Peacemaker Teams. Working together, the two groups try to build bridges among people of goodwill, no matter the faith. "We cannot allow the fanatics to kidnap our religions," said Rasouli, a Shiite Muslim. He began reading a series of quotations from the Bible and the Qur'an. The common theme: honoring the peacemakers. This is Rasouli's second trip back to Minnesota since he made his decision to leave. He comes back to spread a message of peace. Peace, he says to all who will listen, cannot come until the U.S. pulls its troops from Iraq. Not all want to hear what he has to say. On Feb. 15, for example, he was a guest on a local radio talk show on station KTLK hosted by Sarah Janecek and Brian Lambert. "I was scheduled to be on for 30 minutes to an hour," he said. He lasted under 12 minutes before Janecek suggested they end the segment. "I became somewhat short-tempered," said Janecek. "I don't have time to listen to someone who won't acknowledge the atrocities of Saddam Hussein." Rasouli said he was pulling away from the station when he heard Janecek refer to him as "an Iraqi idiot peacemaker." Janecek says she doesn't recall those words. Said Rasouli of the experience, "I was under the impression they wanted me to be a guest so they could hear stories about things I am witnessing. I guess she believes she already knows everything." Rasouli will be in Minnesota for two months, speaking at churches and at colleges. He stays with friends while he's here. "I tell them, they will spoil me and I won't want to go back," he said. "I'm enjoying good food, heat, water and no atmosphere of war. There are no dark columns of smoke in the sky. When I think of this life here and the life there, it makes me weep."