Sami Rasouli is an Iraqi-American who grew up in Iraq and lived in Minnesota as an adult until 2004. He returned to Iraq after the 2003 U.S. invasion of his country, hoping to bring reconciliation between his country of origin and his country of choice. For the past 12 years Sami has worked in Iraq with the Muslim Peacemaker Teams (MPT), a group dedicated to the principles of nonviolence. He returns to the U.S. each year to educate Americans about the situation in the Middle East and to help build people-to-people relationships.

On September 19 of 2020, a bomb placed at the entrance to The American Institute for English in Najaf, Iraq, founded by Sami Rasouli, went off at about midnight. No one was present or injured but the building and school were destroyed. His friends and colleagues are helping him rebuild the school. If you want to help, visit https://gf.me/u/za9rqb