Spirit in Action
Sami Rasouli 2008 - Muslim Peacemaker Teams
As a dual citizen of Iraq and the USA, resident for 20 years of the Twin Cities in Minnesota, Sami Rasouli brings a special perspective to his work with the Muslim Peacemaker Teams.
- Broadcast on:
- 06 Apr 2008
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. [music] Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along On March 31st, 2008, Sammy Rizzouli took Eau Claire by storm With his visit to several area schools Time live on WHYS LP radio And in a personal interview with me for Northern Spirit radio He was squirred on his travels by Mike Miles of Anathoth Community Farm A center for the study of non-violence, community, and sustainable living outside of Luck, Wisconsin Sammy Rizzouli has lived roughly half of his life in Iraq In the other half around Minneapolis, Minnesota He spent about eight months of the past year on the ground in Iraq As part of the Muslim peacemaker teams So he's very much in touch with the people, politics, and passions of Iraq Let's first listen to Sammy As he addresses an audience brought together by the staff and faculty for Peace and Justice The University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, after which I'll visit with Sammy individually Here's Sammy Rizzouli at UWEC on March 31st Salaam Shalom Peace Good to be here In Maliki, five days ago, addressed Mokta Dasadar and his followers in Basra Order him and them to surrender and give up their weapons The response was, "If you drive the occupiers out of Iraq, we will do so" Now, given the fact that Maliki is a sheared, and before the election took place in 2005 He needed Al-Sadar and his movement because Al-Dawah party, which Al-Maliki is the head of that party, political party They didn't have the base, so he needed the followers and he asked Mokta Dasadar to get alliance with him So he can win and Mokta Das helped his followers elected Al-Maliki Al-Maliki became the prime minister since 2005 But Al-Maliki was asked by the U.S. administration, by the U.S. occupation forces You got to get rid of the militias First of all, the renegade, the fuck, the radical young cleric Mokta Dasadar and his followers And he goes, "Well, how can I do that?" The guy and his people brought me to power This is what we're gonna do, we'll give you the information that you need But the U.S. forces should go after his leadership figures, himself, and other surgeries that you think you should get rid of So Al-Maliki supplied with the info and the U.S. began attacking the surgeries Now, Maliki is Shia and the surgeries are Shia too I am too, I was born there, but my wife is Sunni When I pray as a Shia, I was brought up to pray, directing myself to Mokta And, just leaving my hands when I'm sorry My wife is a Sunni, she was brought up to do the same prayer By candidate, she crossed her hand, she thinks this is more humble and obedient Now, my kids, of course, helped us Watching us, and they came up with very reconciled just like this And so when for daddy, when for mama, what's a big deal? Another sect, very modern, very clever, intelligent To restore stability and security, do your things without plans What you hear, of course, not in the beginning of attacking Iraq Invading Iraq, occupying Iraq That motive or the reason that driven the U.S. forces was looking for a weapon of mass destruction Remember that? And that serious issue ended up as a joke Let the president looking for the weapon of mass destruction in his office under his table And one of the funniest moment And that was an insult for our intelligence and for all those lives 4,000 so far, that lost in that stupid war For 1.2 million Iraqis estimated by Lance's studies and the Iraqi body counts To listen to the president talking about what happened in Basra Just five days ago, describing the fight as defining moment Of course, it's a defining moment For whom? For the surge, because he said the surge, "See, it's working!" How is it so working? We learned that the surge held the violence goes down But what happened in Basra and Baghdad in court in Amara and North Korea and Najaf It tells us that things are fragile And they are in hold, hanging there because the U.S. occupation is still in Iraq Trying to divide Iraqi people So, the agenda and the purpose of the whole war Occupation will stay in place Also, the president said, "This war is a challenge and a test to Maliki To keep law and order" and he knows the administration I don't know how many people of you In Iraq, no law above the American law that applied to the U.S. presence in Iraq But which law the president meant? I tell you The Iraqi new oil law that privatize the Iraqi resources Namely the oil and allow U.S. oil companies As well, U.K. companies Be in control of 88% of the Iraqi wealth That is what Muq'da said, what are the resistance elements of the national Iraqi fighters Been doing for the last five years Opposing the U.S. presence opposing the privatization of the Iraqi resources They are opposing also to divide Iraq to three phony states Now, not only the Shiits, the Sunnis, the Kurds and others So, it's really the surge is working As you see the images behind me As I would like to report you That beside the 4,000 men and women in uniform died for the last five years Beside the 27,000 disabled men and women in uniform Who were treated and still treated poorly at the hospitals Beside the 1.2 Iraqi people who died for the last five years And thousand, hundred thousands of injured There are five million orphans today in Iraq One million widows Seven million Iraqis are under the poverty line I was once, Las August actually In the green zone, doing some business At the lunchtime, my American counterpart who worked at the embassy invited me for lunch And here at the buffet, I mean, everything you wish, just like a part of paradise Five sorts, different kind of apples, pineapples, lobsters, beef, lamb You name it, but behind the 12 feet high cement wall There are the rest of the Iraqis, the Red Zone Twenty-five million people still surviving on that ration Daily personal ration food Oil for food program since 1996, still operating And Maliki himself, his government, realizes that If that program is abolished, then there will be no Iraqi government any for Because people in Iraq will starve to death They are starving right now Unemployment is up to 65% The only jobs available, but you get to pay bribe Up to three salaries of $700 a month to be a policeman Or a soldier And there is an estimate of 1 million police and soldiers are underground in Iraq Deployed everywhere, but still, we don't have security yet In Basra alone, there are S, the commander-in-chief of the policeman in Basra reported 462,000 police already hired in Basra But every time there is a crime, spotted in Basra, they found behind it policemen Those, the newly formed policemen and newly formed army, the National Guards Their loyalty is not, therefore, Iraq as a country for the government Which is, the current government, central government, is not for the Iraqi people They represent their sects, their ethnic background, political parties Like what happened in Basra, most of those policemen and army individuals who were sent to fight The Sederis, they took off their uniform, they gave up their weapons and joined the Sederis Or simply went home because they want to keep their jobs Is the search working? Absolutely not Because any Iraqi that I met, I asked, do you know about the search? So, what does that mean? I spent most of my time in Najaf Najaf is about 100 miles south of Baghdad Najaf is not affected by the search because those extra additional 30,000 troops that sent to Iraq They were mainly to secure the capital and the area surrounding the capital Up to the Allah provinces, and they are talking about, they want to attack Al-Qaeda and Mosul So they are moving from Baghdad up to north and to Mosul area Mosul area is about 250 miles north of Baghdad The search means flood of things, and in this case was a flood of extra soldiers And what does those 30,000 soldiers mean for attacks and food contractor? Certainly, that will mean an extra 90,000 meals a day Those meals that I've seen in the green zone, they were not made in Iraq In the green zone, I couldn't find an individual Iraqi working there as a janitor, a worker, a technician No, because they are not trusted The people are hired in the green zone, they are paid daily That monthly daily, $500 up to $1,500 a day to make sure that food is available So don't wonder why the taxpayers here, American people are paying $12 billion a month This is what cost the war in Iraq, that $720 million a day, $500,000 a minute The food that I've seen is shipped daily, where I live in Najaf I never hear the sounds of planes, sounds, planes Comes in and leaves, come in and out, in and out, in and out While Iraqi people, back those are doctors, engineers and newly graduated, back for employment But they cannot find, so what they do, of course, they seek alternatives And there are lots of agencies, whether they are within the country or out of the country Pay them to do things that hurt the country and hurt the Iraqi people Those policemen and army individuals, a new generation, I was never familiar to those people And still, I don't know them Because the people that I belong to, the generation that I grew up with, they are not in Iraq anymore In the middle class, technicians, doctors, engineers, they were forced to leave Iraq by the violence More than 2.25 million, they left Iraq and the neighboring countries, according to the UN organization And another 2 million, they got displaced within the country They left their neighborhoods, their jobs, friends and schools, and they are living now in tents And nobody is taking care of them because even that personal, daily, Russian, formula of food are not getting this It's only $15 a month per person was calculated during Saddam's regime to stop starvation and hunger So they calculated the minimum calories that human beings need up to $15 a person a month Now, Iraqi people are getting this in little portions Many items are missing due to corruptions and the failure of the government to keep the warehouses always full of product that the Iraqi needs 50,000 Iraqi women selling their bodies in Syria alone to survive and support their families back in Iraq I spoke to one of those women in Syria in Damascus And I asked her, "What if the war stops will you go back and stop doing this?" She said, "Well, I don't think so" "Well, why don't you go back and get married?" Because Iraq is a rich country and things will get better You will find a job, the person you get married, have a job and you start a new family She goes, "Nobody can afford what I'm getting now, I'm doing really good, I'll be continuing doing this" Is this the freedom and democracy that Iraqi people were awaiting for? I have a cousin, Metat, three days ago, was killed The government agent put a bomb under his car seat He was a general, once Saddam Hussein was in power, and he wanted to keep his job, he has a family So he worked with the Americans and kept his rank as a general He got promoted, he was working fine and as I got this phone call three days ago He got promoted, but his home was raided by an armed and identified forces Stealing everything valuable from his house Leaving a message that we know this is wrong to do, but we will announce our apology in a TV announcement In two days, in two days, the announcement and TV was about his death I met him last year in Najaf, he came to attend his uncle, my uncle, death, died for aging reason And he told me how terrible the life of women in Iraq He said, "I work with the Americans and I lied to them" I told them that we spotted some terrorists coming from the border of Saudi Arabia And I was accompanying them with ground forces as well There was air forces to get those terrorists, as he said He said, "This is the only way I could convince the American forces to come" But my information was there were shipment of women about to be crossed the border So I came with this excuse to stop this shipment and I was successful to stop that deal He left behind him, a wife and three kids Is the surge good for the Iraqis? Absolutely not The hundred miles I traveled leaving Najaf to Baghdad I did that four times last month and every time I wanted to count the checkpoints And this is something new happened within the last 12 months Since last, not this February, last February 2007 when the surge started Every time I get around 60 to count those checkpoints and I get tired But I ended up having an idea that each kilometer there is a checkpoint From Najaf to Baghdad Fortified by armored vehicles Sniping, position, shooting area And each section of the road monitored by Blims American Blims, surveillance, cameras to see how the people are moving But where are the people? No people left in Iraq Especially in Baghdad, the capital The city of Baghdad used to be called Dar Salam The home of peace is not the home of peace anymore A city of walls, when you wander around driving like you, driving in a maze Walls are dividing communities and segregating the people according to their ethnic background And I just read between the lines, it's like a preparation It's very well, a plan put to divide Iraq in three sections But Baghdad, it's impossible to divide because it's a mixed, wide area of about, what? Seven million people, the surge A senior official, this is in the Maliki government A friend of mine, and actually his very close relative to un-Maliki From the way we reach, an area belonging to Karbala province And he said, "Sami, next time when you come to Baghdad, please, I want you to stay with me at home" First, when I met Ali at his office, he is dressed properly as a senior official, just like me But as soon as he finished from there, we jumped on the car, he changed his outfit and put the dash dash at this long road I don't know why, he said, for protection, why is it for protection? Because I am targeted, I keep receiving death threats I keep receiving those emails and text messages in my cell phone I told him from where, he said, "I don't know, are you the only one?" "No, almost everybody works for the government" I told him, "Well, let me take you a picture" He said, "Don't do that, we are washed" We get to his place, Haifa Street is known, the most dangerous place You can google, "Haifa Street will find stories and stories about that street" This street were designed for low-income people where they live in high-rises But from the both-sided, the Iraqi National Resistance Army took that street after it was evacuated from its residents To fight American convoys that coming back and forth, American petrols that patrol the streets He told me about three apartments there to keep moving for protection He left his mansion, a big, nice, beautiful, fancy house And al-Mansur upscaled, "Neverhood" because he's targeted Then he said, "Sani, you're leaving next month to the US Would you please find a way for me to leave Iraq? I'm tired, I cannot live this way anymore" Well, you're enjoying a good position and you're getting highly, I mean, celery, barely celery And he said, "Well, it's a torture, I cannot stand in anymore" And he kept telling me, "Friend that he know who left paying up to $30,000 to be smuggled out of the country to one of the European countries" He insisted that I stay overnight in one of those half-size streets apartment to witness the after-mignite raids by the US forces With their police dogs sniffing, looking for terrorists He has his own badge, IIZ, like International Green Zone badge that won't help him Neither my Minnesota driver license won't help me to prevent them from coming inside the house and disturbing us One of them said, "Are you sure you're American at home?" And my quote, it wasn't "handy" So asked me what are you from from Minnesota? He said, "Well, I'm from Minnesota" Where do you live? So I gave him an address where I used to live by St. Matt's downtown Minneapolis He said, "Well, do you know the area, the suburbs?" He said, "Tom, yeah, what? Minnetonka, tell me, how do you come from Minnetonka to Minneapolis?" So Tom, there are three rods to get there beside the freeway So he goes, "Well, how do you come from South Minneapolis deep to Minneapolis downtown?" And he said, "Well, I don't know if there are 35W north." He said, "Okay, he's all right. Let's leave." But how about Ali if I'm not around? Ali always telling me he is insulted, humiliated And yet he is part of the government that support the presence of the US The US army, they don't appreciate who is good guy or bad guy They are all terrors, they are all our enemy And actually the US chose to be the enemy And this is what I hear most of the time by the Iraqis They said, "We never been the enemy of the US, but they chose to be enemy And yet we would like to be Americans" We thought we would be the 51st state and they take care of us They bring us the electricity, the clean water, the just basic public services that we need Five years already gone and we still pour Yet Iraq is the most richest country in the region As far oil treasure that Iraq owns Iraqi average people in the winter They struggle to get kerosene because their homes are not heated centrally So they need to buy kerosene heaters And the kerosene is not available Or you have to stay two nights waiting in your car To get fuel for your car, whether it's diesel or gasoline And this is Iraq, believe it or not A litter of gasoline caused once Saddam Hussein was in power Only 20 dinar, 20 dinar may be 4 cents or less 3.7 cents Or now it's 450 dinars, it's about 45 cents The American dollar goes down as you see every day against the yen Against the Swiss mark against the euro But it's never changed against the Iraqi currency Before the war, one dinar was equivalent to three dollars Now the highest Iraqi note is 25,000 dinar So 25,000 dinar used to be worth about 75,000 dollar But it's one bill, you carry it now in your pocket Those what I meant, the blim, they are everywhere in Iraq Before the war, I've seen them over Gaza and the West Bank in Israel Now we see them everywhere in Iraq So how much a dollar now? A dollar is equivalent to 1,250 dinars Why? We don't know why But Iraq is almost debt free now The death that caused by the wars by Saddam Hussein I understood Jim's baker the third He was a shuttle between Iraq and all the creditors that Iraq owned Old, they wiped most of them That's why the economy is not flourishing in Iraq Nobody knows So the surge, is it working for the administration? Yes, for a short time When John Murphy surrendered as a Democrat leader And also other Republicans who opposed the course of violence The course of occupation of this administration for a while But when they listened to General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker Said wow, the violence went down Of course went down because the biggest force in Iraq That drive the country in a violence is the U.S. forces They have their patent If they don't kill, there is no violence If they kill, there is a violence And who's getting killed today in Iraq more than the U.S. forces? The Iraqi police and the Iraqi army Because they drive in front of the U.S. forces And behind them for protection Using them as shields and they drive trucks or pick up trucks Not Humvees or tanks or other armored vehicles And they keep complaining We don't have proper equipment, military equipment This is the Iraqi army Maliki himself When, if you remember, George Bush, last year, the year before 2006 Was he blaming? Maliki is not doing job, we are not satisfied with Well, give us proper equipment, military, we don't have And runs film at the time said, yeah, they have a point We don't give them proper equipment because we don't trust them The Iraqi army turn around and kill us The Iraqi police do the same It just what happened five days ago When the military and the police took out their uniform and joined Mukta the Sutter fighters So how are we going to end this tragic situation? The U.S. forces are not an Iraq peacekeeping forces And the U.S. Army is not a charity organization That go and build schools, masks, hospitals, restore electricity Or providing water treatment plants, no They wear an are still trained to be killer And we need to demonize the people of Iraq So they justify their killing I spoke with a group of Iraq veterans Who are considered themselves winter soldiers Who quit to go back and get involved in this failure strategies of war They came back talking about what's going on in Iraq So more and more American soldiers are realizing they are at the wrong place So they don't do the service anymore Beside the 4,000 that we are aware of after five years Those young men and women got killed I learned from 60 minutes, you might heard this There are 60,000 GIs who left Iraq, came back and committed suicide And how many GIs are back home but mentally destroyed And magically beyond the repair So how are we going to end this? People keep asking me what's going to happen if this occupation ends now My answer is peace because occupation is formed of war As long the war continues, there is no peace But war stops definitely People will evolve and will find ways just like before They will figure out how they accommodate each other When they get their responsibility and they get their country back So be able to rebuild the country Be able to rule themselves, sharing the power But the U.S. being there, siding with one side Again the other, just like the peace in Israel And not find its way as long as the U.S. is siding with one party against another This is exactly what's happening in Iraq And I couldn't take it when I saw the President in Annapolis Bringing Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President And Al-Merth, like children, tell them stop fighting Make peace, but yet, you know Mahmoud Abbas's territories are occupied by the Israeli And the guy who was trying, but Godfather, trying to bring those people together He's occupying Iraq I mean, how could this be reconciled? That's why when the conference of Annapolis ended There was more, no peace, no further talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis Ended up with more violence, you remember what happened in Gaza And that what will happen in Iraq as long as the U.S. is engaging in double standards Of set foreign policies, again Arabs and Muslims And if this occupation not ended I don't think the whole Middle East will be rest Because this is, again, the international law, Geneva Convention, the UN Charter And against two-third of the American people And more than 90% of the Iraqi people They are asking the U.S. to leave Iraq and stop this madness Muslim peacemaker teams that I represent an effort as, like, a part of our work And an effort of bringing people to people together I came up with a proposal signed by Najaf, a province, government council That I came from To Minneapolis Council To open a new page of relationship as sister cities Where both cities can exchange experience, knowledge, visits That will reflect a relationship with an academic arena Like exchange between universities, researchers Helping Iraqis to have a proper medical care And having those members of the Najaf government council Come here and get trained So probably this experiment will be a way of getting off the violence And isolating the people who are pushing for war and more death And this experiment, if sees the light and be a successful one Probably will be duplicated by other cities and other states across the nation Maybe we begin with this effort, peaceful, nonviolent effort This year, the sixth year, hopefully, as soon as possible, the war will end And that will depend mainly on the American people and Iraqi people And from here, I ask for your support for such proposals, such initiatives And also, I'm calling upon universities, schools, students To initiate kind of sister relationship with schools, hospitals, NGOs, and other organizations The more we have this relationship with the Iraqis Which I believe American people owe them So we can stop the breath of the revenge And the cycle of violence should stop at this effort of peacemaking And thank you very much That was the main presentation by Sami Razuli of the Muslim peacemaker teams Speaking at the University of Wisconsin-O'Claire on March 31 At a function sponsored by the staff and faculty for Peace and Justice This is Spirit in Action, which Sami surely is And I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet of Northern Spirit Radio You can listen to this and other productions via our website NorthernSpiritRadio.org And you should also look there for links and info regarding our guests We'll head back to UWEC and listen to some of the questions Sami Razuli answered from the audience One woman asked Sami for more information about the Muslim peacemaker teams Which Sami participated in founding Muslim peacemaker team What we do with all respect to Red Crescent and Red Cross We were ahead of everybody of those agencies you named These organizations cannot be in Iraq right now Because they considered associated with the occupiers So any presence for any foreign organization Right now, it's not recommended We move across the country as Muslim peacemaker teams Because we have this magic sheets Give away as introduction to our organization First thing we say, we have no political agenda We have no ambition to get involved in any process Of politics, and that's good Second, we don't promote any religious agenda Or sectarian agenda What we do, we do peace We bring people together We go to Khanluja as well to Najaf To Mosul as well to Basra So what we did and helped the U.S. vets for peace Recently we helped them to send money We installed purification systems And elementary school Were received very happily by kids And stirred like love And with this action you gain the hearts and mind of the Iraqis And this is what we are looking for When we open this relationship as sister city Then we can do lots of things To prove to the Iraqis that We are Americans peace loving people And this war is not in our name Also we started last year something called letters for peace Communication between young Americans and young Iraqis Sending their letters to each other with pictures So that's another hope for us, like the future What kind of relationship will have those both countries We have to start healing the ones now I mean, I don't want my little boy tells me when I ask him What you gonna be in the future said, a pilot to bomb the U.S. And I don't want to see a young woman who were getting her lunch at the cafeteria One of the colleges When she received a phone call said "Your dear friend got killed in Iraq and she just hit the tray of food And leave to get enlisted to go and get revenge from the people who killed her best friend in Iraq We got to stop this And we have to evolve and grow up and stop being children Excuse me if I really call myself and you children Because we still violent, we are violent We grow up in this environment But we have to find a way to stop this first inwardly To myself, to my wife, to my kids, to my neighborhood To people that I know Because I know I'm violent and still When I get angry, I raise my voice and I'm doing it Now, when I get frustrated I give those weird looks to the people I just disagree with And that's for them violence should stop beginning with me Now, I told you I'm sure it's my wife and me So, I live in Najaf, I got a child because I got remarried last year So, September 1st, I got a boy And the mother said, "What should we name it?" Omar, and Omar is the Sunni name Is the second Khalifa, second Khalifa after Abu Bakr As she said, "Are you sure to do this?" Yes, this is the reconciliation And this is how I become peaceful But like, what have you named his son Muhammad or Zaynab? I challenge you if you do this And I know you're chicken to do it, but I give you I give you really a good recipe Then the first child, Mo, the second hand, and the third hand At least, when you get busted by the FBI, they're like, "Oh, hold on, they are adding" And more on hand, they are not Muhammad together So, what we need really, we need to touch the mind and hearts of the people You don't need to name your kids Because, in Arabia, Muslim people They named their kids Meriam, Dawud, David, Yahya, Johannes, Moses, Musa, Isa Jesus, do you do that without any... I mean, just they do it because they love all the prophets and messengers of God That was Sammy Rizzouli's response to just one of the questions posed at a session Sponsored by the staff and faculty for Peace and Justice, held at UW-O-Claire But I would also like to share with you his answers to some of the questions I asked him individually that day Again, I'm Mark Helpsmeet, and this is Spirit in Action, a NorthernSpiritRadio.org production And we're going to have a personal visit with Sammy Rizzouli, born in Iraq A former resident of Minneapolis for 20 years And a founder of Muslim peacemaker teams Sammy, it's so good of you to join me again for Spirit in Action My pleasure, Mark, thank you for having me It was about two years ago, I think, that I last visited with you Since then, you've spent a lot of time over in Iraq And I'm sure you can give us an update on more things going on there But what I want to hear from you a little bit more about having listened to you already at the schools here in Eau Claire Is some information about what the tenor of the feel of the religious life is in Iraq today Well, we should understand here in the U.S. and the rest of the western world That what happened in Iraq for the last 17 years since the first Gulf War started in 1991 And followed by more than 12 years of harsh economic sanctions that crippled the country Followed also by the last five years of invasion and occupation Those years of hardship drove lots of many kids out of the schools To be in the marketplace working hard to provide their families those kids, which is the new generation right now Also, those kids couldn't stay at home to learn about their heritage culture custom tradition from their parents So they were away from home, they were away from schools, they stayed on the streets struggling to bring some money back home So they survived with their families This generation, they are very vulnerable to adopt any wave of extremism Whether it's religious, political or sectarianism And you'll ask me about how the religious wave that right now taking place in Iraq is very dangerous I should mention also the teachings of the extremist Muslims whether they are Wahhabis, Salafis or Al-Aide It's a set of an ideology plus organizing like organization You have this ideology of a certain Islamic teaching said that they capitalize on it You organize those groups who are violently right now finding their way in Iraq to do harm themselves and do harm the society Now, if you ask me, Sami, how did this happen? Why the extremism religiously found nurturing environment in the Arab world? And I can tell you this, the Iraqi society at least the society that I'm aware of The society that I lived within, I was born in Iraq and I've seen the different factions of that beautiful fabric of Iraqi society live together from all different sects, religions and beliefs But after 1948, the creation of the state of Israel And creating a Jewish state that really extremes and fanatic religiously By creating that state while driving the Muslims, Arabs, the Palestinians from their homeland Which created a reaction and probably chain of reactions to have those Muslim extremists underground right now You are a lead organizer for the Muslim peacekeeping teams And I'm curious of how that movement has been going, has it been growing and do you feel like you're having an effect the last couple of years since I talked to you? Muslim peacemaker team has been established in early 2005 Since then, we've been working in different levels of education and making the people aware of nonviolent or roots teachings in the Islamic education So, how much we have been doing progress and achieving our goals? I think we will be able to evaluate our work next year but we range our success between 1-25% To be effective in our society within Najaf and Karabala provinces Where we held weekly training to educate our members as well Invited other members of different organizations Whether they are politically involved tribal leaders from the universities and academic society And also farmers workers and also women so both genders, students and religious leaders too We held conferences sessions to promote non-violence We went over some young people who thought this political party or that political party was working for them But when they found about our activities and our bylaws and regulations and the things that we are bided with as an NGO Then they stay with us and work with us We were involved in many projects among them we held 10 sessions where invited again representatives of different factions After we explained that these sessions are about to create a national debate to review the newly adapted constitution Where the constitution were rejected by three Iraqi provinces Those provinces and other people thought the constitution was written outside of Iraq And was written by different language and need to be translated And when it was translated it didn't make sense for most of the Iraqis so that created a problem So MPT Muslim peacemaker teams were involved vigorously to bring people together And debate this constitution and bring their views closely If this constitution will be rewritten in a fashion that accepted by all the Iraqi factions that probably will bring peace And then violent mean to discuss things and solve problems So this is one thing we did in last May and June Then September I was able to fly to Uruguay when I was invited by the government university They arranged speaking tours for me to speak about Iraq At the end of that visit which lasted three weeks 23 Iraqi students were granted scholarships to continue their education in Uruguay So this happened in September in October we were able to form 10 MPT teams To go and educate about 100 households, restaurants, owners and staff To educate them about the healthy methods of hygiene, self hygiene and sanitation To prevent from getting sick by cholera that broke out in the northern Iraq And there were about 3,000 cases registered 60 people died because of that disease So MPT also got involved as a way and part of its activities To keep peace by educating people how to process some self hygiene and healthy sanitation Also a team of Muslim peacemaker teams was able doctors, actually three doctors of screening an area An Ansar vicinity, it's a suburb of Najaf where they found people were infected by cancer The investigation of this research shut some lights about how they depleted uranium That was used by the US forces as prohibited weapons that used in the war since the first Gulf War Desert Storm syndrome, if you remember that cause this was caused because of the usage of depleted uranium up in And also was used this time, so we got those cases in Najaf area and as well other areas That sent an alarming message to the authority and people who are interested to keep Iraq as a healthy society But again the war is not helping So the task of MPT representing by me by educating people trying to just stop the war and the occupation So the Iraqis could take care of themselves and could rule themselves without the outside influence About how many people are we talking who you might consider members of MPT and how many people have participated in Trainings and other activities that MPT has sponsored We have right now about 30 to 40 MPT members who are committed to serve in the training session To represent MPT in a different project And we have about 90 members who are considered in the advisory board And also they have part-time People who got training through MPT There are probably close to a thousand people And those people they simply learned about what we promote within the frame of nonviolent culture To help them to be aware of that Islam as a term Linguistically is derivative from Salaam And Salaam means peace, Shalom Shalom also is one attributes, a name of the 99 names of Allah, God So a Muslim whether she or he submits themselves to Islam that means submit themselves to peace And Allah is peace So any violation to that code by committing violence that's break of the code for being Muslim And she or he are not Muslims anymore according to the action of violence And this is something new for many young people that I talked about earlier Who never heard this before, who never got trained and educated whether at home or school to learn about this So we consider MPT as an institution of education that do lots of work to promote nonviolence We just had lunch a little bit ago, there were some aspects that I had asked you to clarify for me about Islam One of them is around meals, I'm used to having grown up Catholic saying a prayer before a meal There's actually a prayer for after the meal also for Catholics, less known It's Quaker, which I am now, we just join hands and silence around the table What is it that Muslims do around meals? Now there are a couple of things Muslims usually do around meals Before the meal starts and after eating What we say in the beginning, actually we say Bismillah Rahman Rahim, which means In the name of God, the most merciful, the most gracious And it's a recognition that this meal was not be possible without the grace of God So always we should remember this At the end of the meal, we say alhamdulillah This means thanks God Now kids to urge them and teach them to do the prayer which is Bismillah Rahman Rahim At the beginning of the meal, we just tell them that if you don't say Bismillah Rahman Rahim Then Satan will eat with you and maybe will eat the bigger portion of your food And then you will be never full And again Allah, God always is center of a Muslims life where Muslims pray five times a day And speaking as Sanir Asuri, who was born in Najaf, not too far away From our father was born, Abraham, in Ur, you are northern of Basra Always I have to remind our listeners, our people, our kids and others Our creator is one, the message of the creator, be good, is one, and we are the people, our one It's a beautiful message to be sending out to everyone From our brother, Samir Rasuli, speaking throughout the Midwest at this point for the next couple months Thank you so much, Sami, for joining us for spirit in action Thank you very much, brother Mark, for allowing me to be in your program That was Sami Rasuli of the Muslim peacemaker teams, back from Iraq for a two-month speaking tour of the USA You can keep up with his news via the link on my northernspiritradio.org website To that for the Muslim peacemaker teams MPT-IRAC.org The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson This spirit in action program is an effort of northern spirit radio You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website northernspiritradio.org Thank you for listening I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light This is spirit in action With every voice, with every song We will move this world along With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing