Dear Friends,
Whenever the shadow tyranny looms, creeping up as it does again and again, freedom stands or falls on the choices of the witnesses of the age. We are free today because the heroes of yesteryears raised their voices and threw themselves into the throes of the struggle to keep justice alive.
Pirzadi-Shahida Noor drew inspiration from Joan of Arc. Today, we draw inspiration from Noor. 75 years ago her body was burned in the crematorium in Dachau. But her executioner could not touch her soul.
What Noor has left behind is a treasure of inestimable valuable. Her stories, poems, and songs, and her mystical drama Aède, are coded messages encrypting the city plan of the New Jerusalem. And her greatest story of all is the story of her life.
The Yoga Vasistha and Arabian Nights show how stories live within stories. Thanks be to God, the story of Noor lives in each of us. May it illuminate our lives, urging us onward in the fight for freedom and in the building, stone by stone, of the Temple that shall be a house of prayer for all people.
Yours ever,
Pir Zia