"You woke up suddenly in a crowd of people at a subway station (These people were busy entertaining themselves in various activates).
You then notice that an underground train pulls up repeatedly (at random intervals), and station guards select people (seemingly) at random, tie them up, and shove them into the train. The train disappears into a dark tunnel and the people are never seen again.
This happens again and again.
The people's disappearance is strange enough but whats even stranger is that people who are busy entertaining themselves continue to distract themselves with their activities even though they know that they will also be shoved into the train one day.
Any sane human being would want to know:
What brought me here?
Where are all of these people are disappearing to?
A really interesting insight into how the Taliban controls Waziristan, etc.
David Stephenson Rohde is a New York Times reporter who was kidnapped by the Taliban in November 2008. He escaped on the night of June 19, 2009, and made his way to freedom after more than seven months of captivity in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mr. Rohde was part of The Times's reporting team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He gives his account of his experience as a captive in a five part series, Held by the Taliban.
"What we tend to often forget is that the cultural activities we want the world to focus on take place in a middle-class, affluent bubble, with electricity generators on standby, private security guards with scanners, and which are often bankrolled by mobile-phone companies or fast food chains.
Outside this bubble, millions try to eke out a living, then go home to watch the horrors of the day on their split screens.
Not too many of them get to go to the theatre to sing along with those jaunty Abba songs even if Money Money Money is the only anthem allowed at the bottom of hell." READ ON
"Last week, I promised my daughters that whatever they do in their working lives, nothing will ever be as bad as this. It was 10.45pm and they were sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by notes on exothermic reactions and quotes from Paradise Lost. When all this is over, I assured them, what comes next will seem a doddle. GCSEs, A-levels and finals are a hell that nothing in the office will ever match." READ ON
Former CIA station chief in Kabul and author of The Future of Political Islam says:
"Only the withdrawal of American and NATO boots on the ground will begin to allow the process of near-frantic emotions to subside within Pakistan, and for the region to start to cool down. Pakistan is experienced in governance and is well able to deal with its own Islamists and tribalists under normal circumstances; until recently, Pakistani Islamists had one of the lowest rates of electoral success in the Muslim world"
At the beginning of SunniPath's highly recommended Tahawi course, Shaykh Hamza used this analogy to make us understand the need to understand our beliefs:
