Mohammed Al Samawi: How Interfaith Activism Became, and Saved, His Life

Sitting opposite Mohammed Al Samawi at a West Hollywood coffee shop, it’s hard to imagine the Yemeni refugee dodging bullets and squads of al-Qaida fighters to escape civil war in 2015. But then a police car, sirens screaming, zooms by. Al Samawi is shaken. He recalls his first American Fourth of July when he saw fireworks and ran, thinking it was an airstrike. And when a helicopter hovers over the café, he looks around nervously. The trauma he experienced during his harrowing escape, made possible by a collection of people he met through his interfaith work — many of them Jews — is still with him.

In 2015, the once-simmering civil war began to boil in Yemen between Houthis (Shiite rebels from the north) and President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi’s forces, backed by Sunni groups, including Saudi Arabia. The Sunni network also included al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Al-Qaida squads began to target anyone they perceived to be an enemy, including Shiites in Aden. As someone from the north with a Shiite background who was engaged in interfaith activism and had dialogue and cooperation with Jews and Israelis, Al Samawi suddenly found himself the target of death threats. And the battle for his life began. 

Over the course of 15 days in March and April 2015, with help from many organizations and activists, including activists Daniel Pincus, Justin Hefter, Natasha Westheimer and Megan Hallahan — all of whom he met through his interfaith work — Al Samawi made a seemingly impossible escape. 

The 33-year-old has a warm smile that belies his harrowing past. He makes friends easily, online and off, including with the Australian-accented Egyptian owner of the coffee shop where Al Samawi is a regular.

“I need to give him a good kiss, because he’s like my little brother,” the owner says, swooping him in. “How are you, brother? I don’t know how he’s alive. It just doesn’t make sense. God bless him. He’s a Muslim man and I’m a Christian man, and he’s doing interfaith, which is the right thing to do. I love you, brother. It just blows my mind.” 

Al Samawi has written about his extraordinary story in his riveting 2018 memoir, “The Fox Hunt: A Refugee’s Memoir of Coming to America,” (William Morrow). 

It’s a story so intense and dramatic that it is headed for the big screen with Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning film, theater and television producer Marc Platt producing, and a screenplay in process by Oscar winner Josh Singer (“Spotlight”). To date, Al Samawi’s bestseller has been translated into eight languages.

The trauma he experienced during his harrowing escape, made possible by a collection of people he met through his interfaith work — many of them Jews — is still with him.

“When I came here, I was not willing to tell my story,” Al Samawi told the Journal. “It was my dream to work at a coffee shop and forget what happened to me. And I was afraid that the U.S. [was] exactly like Yemen, that if I would keep doing interfaith work, al-Qaida [would] come and kill me here. But the most beautiful thing here is freedom of speech.” 

During his first speeches to American audiences after his escape, Al Samawi cried often, but with repetition was able to speak with less emotion. He said that telling his story has become a therapy of sorts.

Becoming an Interfaith Activist

A small stroke when he was a baby left Al Samawi with a withered right arm, hand, leg and foot. Although the disability isn’t noticeably visible, he is unable to drive. As a Muslim child in the Yemeni capital Sana’a, Al Samawi became a dutiful student in an educational system that positioned Westerners, especially Americans and Jews, as the enemy. 

He couldn’t play soccer because of his disability but decided to study languages, particularly English. In his 20s, while a student at Sana’a University, he struck up a relationship with his Christian teacher. Concerned that all nonbelievers were going to hell, Al Samawi gave the teacher a Quran. The teacher promised to read it, but in return Al Samawi had to read the Christian Bible. He realized — with horror — that he was reading the Bible of the Jews. The teacher had meant for him to start with the New Testament. Al Samawi saw the similarities between the Quran and the Jewish Bible and began to wonder if the education system had led him astray. 

“Hate isn’t something you’re born with,” he said. “People educate you to hate.” 

When he graduated in 2010, he worked for his doctor father, and then for nongovernmental organizations. Meanwhile, his curiosity about people of other faiths, especially Jews, grew. He learned on the internet about the history of Yemen’s Jews. On Facebook, he searched for people who might be Jewish and sent them a message that read:

“Greetings from Yemen! My name is Mohammed Al Samawi and I am a Muslim living in Yemen. What do you think of Islam? What do you think of Muslims? What do you think of Yemenis?”

Not surprisingly, people didn’t accept his solicitations right away. But an Israeli Jew answered and a conversation began that led Al Samawi to a group called YaLa Young Leaders, where Jews and Arabs gathered to discuss and promote peace. Then he wondered if he could meet a Jew in person. He typed in “Muslim” + “Jewish” + “Conference” and found the Muslim-Jewish Conference (MJC), a gathering for students and young professionals set to convene in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in late June 2013. (As of this year, the MJC has been attended by more than 1,000 young changemakers from 65-plus countries.) 

Connecting in Person at Interfaith Conferences

Pincus, a New York based pharmaceutical and biotech consultant and an MJC board member, barely remembers meeting Al Samawi in Sarajevo.

“I remember his face and physical disability, but I didn’t remember the personal interaction with him,” Pincus told the Journal, “which is strange, almost incredible to people who read the story. You get a flurry of friend requests at the end of the conference and click ‘accept.’ There was no friendship,” he said. 

There also was no way to predict how integral Pincus would become during Al Samawi’s escape nearly two years later. 

In late February 2015, Al Samawi attended a conference in Jordan hosted by Seeds of Peace. There he met social entrepreneur and peacebuilder Hefter in line for coffee. Hefter was representing Bandura Games, a startup he co-founded with Israeli and Palestinian partners to develop video games to connect kids across different cultures. 

Hefter, now a master’s student at the Harvard Kennedy School, remembers being “immediately put at ease by his genuine warmth and kindness. His eyes tell you that he’s a kind person,” Hefter told the Journal. “He said that despite the growing violence in Yemen, he would be returning to help make his country better. His dedication to helping people was inspiring, and we quickly added each other as friends on Facebook.”

The Great Escape

Back home in Sana’a, Al Samawi received death threats for his work with Jews and Israelis. The Yemeni president had announced Aden would be the new capital, secured by the government police. Al Samawi said it seemed safer to move there. But the violence followed and intensified. 

“I never thought it would be dangerous like that,” he said.  “Extreme groups [were] targeting me [and I] didn’t have anyone — police, army, family — to secure me.” Knowing he needed to get out of Aden, Al Samawi reached out to his interfaith network. Messages flew over Twitter, Facebook, email and Skype with the ask: “Can you help? Mohammed needs to get out of Yemen.”

“Mohammed wrote an email connecting all of us [the core team],” Hefter said. “He is a natural team-builder and it was the strength of the team that kept us all going during difficult moments.” 

As his friends mobilized, Al Samawi was running out of food, water and money, and in constant danger from bombings and squads of al-Qaida fighters targeting people from the north. 

“They were beating a man in the street and people were just watching because they were also frightened of being beaten,” he said. “Al-Qaida fighters were searching for people from the north, looting their apartments, killing them and taking everything,” a fate he only narrowly escaped himself, he said. 

Al Samawi reached out to his interfaith network. Messages flew over Twitter, Facebook, email and Skype with the ask: “Can you help? Mohammed needs to get out of Yemen.”

When Pincus heard that Al Samawi was looking for help, “I didn’t know what to do,” he said, but was willing to pay his plane fare to Cairo or Amman, Jordan. When all flights from Yemen were canceled, Pincus found someone to do an exfiltration through Kenya for $50,000. But he was nervous.

“It could result in Mohammed’s and other people’s deaths,” Pincus said. “The likelihood it would work out was extremely low. Mohammed is handicapped, has no car and is in a war zone. The price tag [of various escape plans] kept going up. I didn’t know how I specifically got on the escalator and didn’t know where or how to get off.  How much of my own money would I spend to save a person’s life?” 

The closing of the airports meant the end of the exfiltration plan and the team reached out to politicians, diplomats, activists, advocacy groups, policymakers, anyone they thought could help. 

Since Al Samawi’s only connection with his American friends was his phone, Pincus said, “If electricity and communication were cut off, we couldn’t help. He was an army of one, stepping outside the apartment and leaving behind electricity and hoping his phone doesn’t die. There’s a scene in the book when I told him, ‘You cannot let your phone battery die or we can’t help you anymore.’ ” 

Pincus also instructed Al Samawi to take photographs of his experience to visualize his survival. “I needed him to approach the situation that he was going to make it through instead of dying, which he could have,” Pincus said. 

Through his friends’ efforts, Al Samawi managed to board a boat bound for Djibouti on the horn of Africa. But at no point was his escape certain, Al Samawi said, recalling one harrowing moment, when the United Nations staff was evacuated from the hotel where he was staying.

“The hotel [had been] bombed. I was thinking I’m in a safe place but I found myself alone and lost hope. I sent a message to Daniel and Justin, ‘I think it’s the end.’ ”

Leaving the hotel at great risk and getting to the port, he said he “[saw] the ship is right there … but then they said no Yemenis can go.” Another flurry of actions by the team ultimately enabled his escape to Djibouti. 

Hefter, Pincus and Hallahan (who was unavailable to comment for this story) messaged each other and their contacts to create a speaking tour for Al Samawi, resulting in him receiving a four-month visa to the United States. He flew from Djibouti to Ethiopia, then to Germany and finally on to San Francisco.

“The hotel [had been] bombed. I was thinking I’m in a safe place but I found myself alone and lost hope. I sent a message to Daniel and Justin, ‘I think it’s the end.’ ” — Mohammed Al Samawi

After a speaking engagement at Stanford University organized by members of his network, Al Samawi flew to New York and moved in with Pincus. In May 2016, Al Samawi applied for and received political asylum. He moved to Washington, D.C., into a house paid for by Pincus, and found work with the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy, coordinating their Middle East efforts. He then lived briefly in Miami before moving to Los Angeles, where he now resides. 

Now Al Samawi wants people to learn from his story.

“There’s no shame in being different,” he said. “I was always angry at God for giving me a disability. But because of my disability, I’m here with you. My disability made me learn English, read the Bible, be on Facebook. Now I’m here.”

He urges his audiences to “understand that not everything you learn from school, university, media, synagogues and mosques is the absolute truth,” and to believe that “small things matter. The people who helped me out didn’t have military experience or [didn’t have to] be Superman or Batman or have money. [They] just believed in themselves and believed they [could] do it.” 

He added, “I love and miss my country, especially the coffee, and family,” with whom he speaks on WhatsApp. “I miss them so much.” 

Finding Meaning and Family in a New Country

Through his speaking engagements, Al Samawi’s American “family” keeps expanding. “Everywhere I speak, I find someone who says, ‘I am your Jewish mother.’ It’s amazing to find such support in general but especially from the Jewish community,” he said. 

“In Yemen, I thought I was alone. But here, I don’t feel like I’m alone; [I] feel like I’m with a big family,” he said, referring specifically to the interfaith activist community.

Since his arrival in the United States, Al Samawi has been invited to iftars, seders, Shabbat dinners and holiday gatherings. At a Shabbat dinner in New York, he told his story to a group of “Broadway people,” including hosts lyricist Benj Pasek (“La La Land,” “The Greatest Showman” “Dear Evan Hansen”) and actor Adam Kantor (“Fiddler on the Roof,” “The Band’s Visit”). Pasek introduced Al Samawi to Platt, who decided to turn his story into a film and encouraged Al Samawi to write his memoir ahead of the film. 

“Mohammed’s vulnerability and authenticity are what make his story and his current interfaith efforts so remarkable. He bares his soul in [his memoir] ‘The Fox Hunt,’ and I’m sure that’s what the movie producers recognized when they heard his story, as well.” — Justin Hefter

“Being someone who loves movies, I never thought there would be a movie about me,” Al Samawi said. “But also I was afraid. If my story would be in a movie [or a book], I’d put myself in more danger [because my enemies] would know where I am. But in the end, I thought God saved my life for a reason and I feel like the movie will give the reason, and people [will learn that] the people in Yemen are suffering. I really want to change my community in Yemen, and the movie will help.” 

Platt, he said, “is the key to everything that I have right now. He doesn’t care about me as a project, he cares about me as someone who belongs to his family, as a human being. I feel lucky that I met someone like him.” 

“Mohammed’s vulnerability and authenticity are what make his story and his current interfaith efforts so remarkable,” Hefter said. “He bares his soul in ‘The Fox Hunt,’ and I’m sure that’s what the movie producers recognized when they heard his story, as well.” 

Creating the Screenplay

The script tells Al Samawi’s story through flashbacks, screenwriter Singer told the Journal in a phone interview, and shows his transformation from a kid who gave his lunch money to the Muslim Brotherhood to help them fight Jews, to a peace activist who left behind indoctrinated hatred, forming interfaith relationships that ultimately saved his life. 

When he started the project, Singer asked Al Samawi for an English copy of the Quran, to familiarize himself with its core beliefs and values and to take care “not to demonize the religion.”

Singer said he found the Quran “beautiful, and quite similar to what I was taught. It made me understand that there is a peaceful way to practice Islam; certainly a more openhearted way than the way al-Qaida does. It was separating the Islamic religion from the Islamists.”

Al Samawi’s message, Singer said, “is that we are much more alike than we are different and it’s time we started acting like it. The smallest steps can lead to the biggest of changes.”

The Voice of a Refugee

Yemen is one of six countries whose people cannot come to the U.S., according to the federal immigration ban. That means whenever Al Samawi leaves the country for his speaking engagements, he might not be able to re-enter. On one re-entry, only by showing a copy of his book to prove he was an author, was he allowed in. 

“The U.S. is a country of refugees,” Al Samawi said, recalling how the Yemeni president, who reigned for decades, “created fake enemies: Jews and Israel. Now the fake enemy of the [American] people is refugees and ‘taking our jobs, bringing crimes,’ it’s the same kind of propaganda. You shouldn’t [place] a ban on people based on their own faith or nationality,” he said. 

In an email to the Journal, Westheimer wrote, “In a time where our leaders are choosing to advance discriminatory policies to close borders from refugees and asylum seekers, like Mohammed, his voice and story is more important than ever.” 

Founder and executive director of the Muslim-Jewish Conference Ilja Sichrovsky told the Journal of its decision to help Al Samawi, “There was a life in danger and a community was able to save it. It is just one example of the types of people who come to the Muslim-Jewish Conference and their commitment to the cause of promoting peaceful coexistence and, more importantly, cooperation.” 

“Mohammed showed incredible courage in the choices he made in his life back there and also in the way that he has chosen to live from a place of possibility and love here,” said Rabbi Sharon Brous of IKAR, where Al Samawi spoke during the afternoon break on Yom Kippur this year. “Some simple acts of kindness and love do end up changing the landscape for someone. In this case, they saved his life, so thank God for that.” 

Asked who should play him in the movie, Al Samawi laughed and said, “Brad Pitt. No. Just kidding. In the end, I don’t care who plays me. I care about spreading the word of peace. I want people to understand how four people with no experience in evacuation who didn’t know each other and lived far away from each other helped me escape in 15 days. I want people to feel, when they read my book and watch my movie, to know that they can do something if they really believe in it.”

Mohammed Al Samawi’s Abrahamic House

One of Mohammed Al Samawi’s first U.S. speaking engagements was with Moishe House, a global network of young Jewish adults living and creating Jewish programming together. Encountering the Moishe House community, Al Samawi had an epiphany:

“Why don’t I create something like [Moishe House] but also for Muslims, Christians, Jews and other faiths? … Everyone is ‘othering’ and in the Abrahamic House, there’s no ‘others,’ it’s ‘we,’ and we need to know more about each other.”

In March 2020, a group of young adults of different faiths (ages 21-35) will move into a house in Los Angeles. In exchange for rent, they will volunteer for six hours a week on one of four programming teams. YaLa will help create cultural opportunities that build trust and connections. The Tzedakah team will focus on opportunities to give back to community faith organizations. Out of the Box will tackle stereotypes and popular issues, including anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, the refugee crisis, the LGBTQ crisis, women’s rights and more. The fourth team will be devoted to holiday celebrations, identifying special holiday customs for each of the faiths, and how they’re similar to other faith traditions. Al Samawi’s goal for Abrahamic House, like the Moishe Houses that inspired it, is to have 50 houses across the U.S. and beyond. He also has received requests from Germany and France. (Moishe House founder David Cygielman advised Al Samawi on the creation of Abrahamic House and is now a board member.) 

“That’s why God saved my life, to continue doing my message. It says in the Quran and the Talmud, ‘Whoever saves a life saves the entire world.’ I hope I will be able to change people’s lives.” — Mohammed Al Samawi

“Mo invented a brilliant idea to promote coexistence and literal cohabitation,” Pincus said. “Oftentimes, people look at interfaith activities as something institutions can do — it’s for the rabbis and imams. But he’s effectively created a distributed network of interfaith community centers, which is fantastic. They are ordinary people doing something extraordinary. It’s a beautiful and inspiring model.” 

“I am consistently moved and never surprised by Mohammed’s unwavering commitment creating connections across cultures, religions and practices,” Westheimer wrote. “The Abrahamic House seeks to model the world he wants to build, and I have no doubt that his vision will be an inspiration for others across the country.”

Al Samawi hopes that Abrahamic House will be a place “where [people] can come and we give them the tools to change perspective from ignorance and hate to love and compassion. That’s why God saved my life, to continue doing my message,” he said. “It says in the Quran and the Talmud, ‘Whoever saves a life saves the entire world.’ I hope I will be able to change people’s lives.”