Maryam Amir – Be the Carpenter

			Nur al-Din was a predecessor of Salah
		

			al-Din.
		

			That means he worked for decades in order
		

			to be able to liberate Jerusalem from the
		

			crusaders that had slaughtered Muslims, Jews, Christians who
		

			didn't agree with them, who by their own
		

			accounts had barbecued babies and eaten them, who
		

			turned Masjid al-Aqsa into a stable, into
		

			a pigpen, into a place of trash.
		

			Muslim leaders were making treaties with these crusaders
		

			in order to keep Nur al-Din out
		

			of their lands.
		

			And Salah al-Din, when he came out
		

			of their lands, it sounds very familiar to
		

			what we're witnessing today, where you and I
		

			who feel like we have no real power,
		

			who are boycotting every small thing, who are
		

			donating and calling our elected officials and protesting,
		

			and yet those who could actually make a
		

			difference.
		

			But inshallah, we can make a difference too.
		

			And I want to tell you about the
		

			carpenter.
		

			Nur al-Din wanted to commission a carpenter
		

			to make a minbar.
		

			Even knowing that he was far from entering
		

			al-Aqsa itself, he commissioned a carpenter to
		

			make this pulpit where he envisioned the imam
		

			of Masjid al-Aqsa in the future, in
		

			the future generations.
		

			So Nur al-Din, with this vision of
		

			one day Jerusalem will be liberated, paid this
		

			carpenter to make this minbar.
		

			And that minbar for generations came in with
		

			Salah al-Din and continued to be the
		

			place where imams would stand and address the
		

			people.
		

			Nur al-Din never entered al-Aqsa in
		

			his lifetime, despite the fact that he worked
		

			for decades to liberate it.
		

			It was Salah al-Din who, on the
		

			back of his work and the years of
		

			Salah al-Din's work, was able to enter.
		

			But it was also because of people like
		

			the carpenter who witnessed the vision of Nur
		

			al-Din and who worked for that liberation.
		

			Today there's a man in Beirut who was
		

			asked why he continued to keep his restaurant
		

			open despite the fact that Beirut was bombed.
		

			And in his response he says that this
		

			is all in God's hand.
		

			So what's he going to do other than
		

			continue to work?
		

			Remember Nur al-Din.
		

			Remember the carpenter.
		

			Work for the vision.
		

			Plant those seeds that inshallah will last generations
		

			with the intention of liberation.