'I'm being hunted down’: This Tennessean turned to peacemaking after coping with anti-Muslim hate

• Samar Ali is a practicing Muslim. She grew up in rural Waverly, Tennessee.
• Ali has served as a White House Fellow and in the administration of former Republican Gov. Bill Haslam.
• Along the way, she faced death threats and hate.
• Her experiences served as fuel to launch the nonprofit Millions of Conversations.

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Things could've been much worse for the Muslim girl who grew up in Waverly, Tennessee, population 4,300.

Sure, there was the time when a nun said anyone who didn't believe Jesus is Lord and Savior would burn in hell. And yes, many of the town's Southern Baptists politely offered to have her baptized so she could go to heaven.

But Samar Ali said she mostly remembers playing with other little girls, being loved on by their parents, walking through neighbors' unlocked, open doors. She remembers townsfolk trusting her physician parents implicitly, even if patients didn't always understand the doctors' heavily accented English.

She remembers her parents being considered heroes after they worked around the clock during the February 1978 train derailment and explosion that killed 16 people, including the town's police and fire chiefs.

She remembers being great friends with the two classmates who beat her out for valedictorian at Waverly Central High School.

"It was a pollyannish experience," Ali, 41, said. "I would not have wanted to grow up anywhere else. We felt safe; we felt very secure."

That ended with a call from the White House in August 2010.

Her phone rang as she was staring out at the Mediterranian Sea in Beirut, where she was planning her wedding to her Lebanese fiance.

"Are you in a safe location?" the caller from a White House phone number asked. "We're getting death threats against you."

Even before beginning her White House Fellowship during the Obama administration, Ali became a target of fringe media who feared a Muslim in the U.S. government would lead to infiltration of terrorists from the Middle East.

That fear led to nearly 10 years of hate aimed at Ali as she served out her White House fellowship before joining Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam's administration. Death threats, derision and suspicion often were part of her daily life, showing up frequently in posts on media, in her email and on her phone.

During and after her days at the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, Ali received text messages threatening her. Law enforcement agencies regularly tell Ali terrorist organizations are trying to hack into her social media. Those same agencies suggest Ali hire a bodyguard.

"I feel like I'm being hunted down like a wild animal," she said. "I'm wondering, is my professional pursuit going to cost me my life?"

Ali used those episodes and her government service as fuel to launch a peacemaking nonprofit called Millions of Conversations. Ali, who holds undergraduate and law degrees from Vanderbilt University, also serves as co-chair of the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy.

National media often tap her for her perspectives on conflict, terrorism and prospects for peace around the world.

Surviving death threats informed her and grounded her in those roles, she said. Ali said her painful experience as a target of fear and disinformation helps her be a better peacemaker.

"I'm not immune to being scarred by hate," she wrote in an email to The Tennessean.

"To recognize the havoc its caused internally for me is the way I've begun to heal and be happier than ever before," she wrote. "Learning how not to obsess about it or be angry about it or to let it define my life. But rather to live fully.  In the freest sense. Free from paranoia. Free from assumptions about what people might be thinking of you."

That lesson started in her hometown, tiny Waverly about an 75 minutes west of Nashville, where her parents moved in 1976. Where her parents faced assumptions from Humphreys County residents.

Biscuits and chocolate meringue pie

Ali's father, surgeon Subhi D. Ali, grew up in a rural area about 15 minutes outside Jerusalem. Ali's mom, gastroenterologist Maysoon Shocair-Ali, grew up in Syria. The two met at a house party in Washington, D.C., where Ali's dad had gone to Howard University medical school. The two got married and started a family before they answered an ad for two openings at a community hospital in rural Tennessee. That allowed Subhi Ali to get back to his rural roots and out of Washington.

For the most part, people in Waverly welcomed the new doctors, and hospital staffers were thrilled to finally have a surgeon there. But, Subhi Ali said, "there were those who wanted a Christian surgeon," adding with a shrug, "I could relate to that. It is what it is."

Samar Ali's earliest memories are of loving, accepting neighbors. A local Church of Christ school teacher, Jennie Lee Monroe, became her Southern grandma, showing the girl how to make biscuits and chocolate meringue pie and teaching her Southern etiquette and traditions.

Ali's biggest bump came when she attended elementary school at a Catholic church in nearby McEwen, where the girl often sat outside the church while the other students were at mass.

"There were moments I felt confused, moments I felt lonely, there were moments I felt bored," she said. "There were moments I felt guilty. They want me to be a certain way and I’m not that way. And these are people I respect."

During that time, the nun pronounced anyone not accepting Jesus as Lord was going to hell. The pronouncement scared Ali, who started crying — and quickly found herself being comforted by another nun and the parish priest, who suggested the offending nun perhaps was overzealous.

"For a child to be threatened by a nun is very unfortunate," Ali's mom said, though she and her husband thought little of it afterward.

"Some of the nuns were really good," Dr. Maysoon Shocair-Ali said, "and some of the nuns were really not."

Still, childhood friend Ebie McFarland said she always knew when her joyful friend was at Waverly high school:

"That laugh is how I knew Samar’s in the building; you could hear it from the auditorium to the gymnasium."

After switching to public schools and graduating salutatorian her high school class, Ali followed her two older siblings to Vanderbilt University, with plans to become a doctor.

But she found she had to drag herself to pre-med classes — and she really loved her diplomacy classes.

A trip to Israel between freshman and sophomore years sealed the deal.

"I was on a plane with Muslims, Jews and Christians, all going to the Holy Land. We’re sharing the same level of excitement. If you’re walking the steps of Moses, Jesus and prophet Mohammed, you can’t help but reflect on the divine," she said.

"Then you see barbed wire, security and checkpoints. What if we removed all these barriers and all came together?"

After seeing their daughter's passion for peacemaking, Ali's parents gave their blessing for her to switch career paths.

"My mom said, 'Do your future patients a favor and don't become a doctor. That's not where your passion is,'" Ali said smiling.

Ali started a Middle Eastern students association at Vanderbilt and became active with student government. After the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, university administrators asked Ali to address the student body — and that launched her onto the path of becoming one of Nashville's most consistent and powerful voices for peace.

'Financial jihadist'

After law school, Ali went to work for a prestigious Washington, D.C., law firm Hogan Lovells, helping negotiate international deals for U.S. companies doing business in the Middle East and other parts of the world. As part of that work, Ali made sure deals in the Middle East were within guidelines of Islamic law that barred gambling, prostitution, excessive profit from money lending. Any profits from alcohol sales had to go to non-Muslim owners.

That work later would be one of the things used to attack Ali and to attack President Barack Obama and Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam when she worked for their administrations.

That started in 2010 when Ali landed the prestigious White House fellowship. It was at a time when some tea party members were suggesting the president was a Muslim born outside the U.S. and therefore ineligible to be president.

Some media pointed to Ali's fellowship of evidence that Obama was letting Muslims in to take over the federal government. Ali was labeled a "financial jihadist." Death threats followed.

"I think she was in shock," said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Jason Dempsey, a longtime friend of Ali who also served as a White House Fellow when she did. "It was obviously a source of stress.

"And it was obviously silly. But silliness combined with the atmosphere at the White House can turn ugly pretty quick."

"It’s really hard to describe. It hit me by surprise," Ali said. "It was supposed to be a joyful, exciting moment of working in White House and to serve your country. And that’s not the way you want to start."

Ali said she often looked over her shoulder, but usually felt safe in Washington because most times, she was around a lot of security. Her husband's first reaction: "Are you sure this is worth the risk?"

"Were those alarming conversations initially that came to her? Yes," her husband, Amr El-Husseini, said, "but we put it into perspective."

Right before her time at the White House, Ali connected with Bill Hagerty, a former White House Fellow, through a mutual friend. After becoming commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, Hagerty offered Ali a job as assistant commissioner for international affairs.

Within weeks, Haslam came under the same attacks that Obama did for allowing Ali, a Muslim, into the administration.

In 2012, a state Senate candidate charged that Ali would be a conduit to bring "Sharia money" into Tennessee, money the candidate, Woody Deegan, claimed would be used for jihad, fights against enemies of Islam.

"We’re going to let them bring it ['Shariah money'] into Tennessee and let those proceeds go back to kill our boys," Deegan told a reporter from The Commercial Appeal in Memphis.

After a one-on-one meeting with Haslam, the governor came out strongly in favor of Ali and against the Islamophobia that sparked several Tennessee county GOP organizations to call for Ali's ouster.

"Samar is someone, quite frankly — and I know some people in this room disagree with me — who I think has been incredibly unfairly maligned," Haslam said at a GOP gathering in Nashville in 2012.

"She is somebody who was making a whole lot more money somewhere else, loved Tennessee, wanted to come back here and be a part of it," he said.

Ali praised Haslam for his leadership in taking on the more fringe viewpoints. Still, she felt much less safe in Tennessee because there was much less security around her.

Millions of Conversations

Agents from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and other agencies warned her to lay low, stay away from public appearances with high-ranking elected officials, don't make any public appearances of her own. Those warnings set off fear.

"What do I do? How do I stay safe? How do I navigate this? How do I stay alive?" she said.

And the threats felt much more personal in her home state: "I felt alone. I felt angry, too. It’s one thing to not feel safe; it’s another not to feel safe in your own home."

Ali felt herself becoming a different person. "At this point, I lost my sense of humor. I became consumed by it all."

A 2017 dinner with a friend, who was a fellow state employee, helped her shift her point of view, a night that started with Ali being depressed.

"Are you going to be like this all night?" the friend asked.

Ali said, "I’m being hunted down like a wild animal. Sorry I’m not the best company."

The friend replied: "Let’s say they do kill you tonight. Is that how you’re going to go out? If you keep acting like this, they’ve won. Do you want to live your life like this? Because if you do, they’ve basically taken it."

Ali, knowing her friend was right, refocused on "working for inner peace so I can have outer peace and be a peace maker."

"I’m going to stop worrying about what’s going to happen to me, and I’m going to start figuring out what I want to do every day."

First things first: In 2017, Ali and a public relations expert, Rabiah Ahmed, launched a nonprofit called Millions of Conversations to battle Islamophobia and hate speech in the U.S.

"That’s not the Tennessee way, that’s not the Nashville way, that’s not the American way," Ali said. "Do we want to demonize and tear each other apart like animals? Or do we want to give each other grace?"

Soon after, her U.S. Army friend Dempsey joined the nonprofit to grow it into a conflict resolution group and to celebrate diversity and unity in America.

Projects have included:

• Helping Grundy County, one of the state's poorest counties, connect to neighboring counties and to the state, an effort that included launching a leadership program for the community.
• Mediating between state legislators and university officials when problems erupt between them.
• Advising the Congressional Jan. 6 Committee on how to disassemble disinformation.
• Helping Facebook, Twitter and other social media adjust algorithms to suss out messages of hate.

That work has been informed by Ali processing how the hate that was directed at her affected her.

"This is truly about a journey home, in the truest sense. I've had to dig deep to connect into who I truly am," she said.

"To understand how I've internalized the stigmatization that comes with hate and how that impacted my personality. To see what tough skin I've grown into out of necessity and to not let that tough skin shield me from being in touch with my own heart and soul.

"To also not let it lead me astray into distrusting people around me in ways that take away one of the things I love the most about life: being in community."

Mission accomplished. Her childhood friend, McFarland, now a Music Row publicist, said Ali has her laugh back.

"In 2019, I was backstage at a Darius Rucker show in Madison Square Garden in New York," McFarland said, "and I heard Samar's laugh. That's how I knew it was time to go find my friends."

Reach Brad Schmitt at brad@tennessean.com or 615-259-8384 or on Twitter @bradschmitt.