Islamic law, with its harsh punishments and its repression of free thought, was, Taha argued, a human interpretation of the Medinan verses and the recorded words and deeds of the Prophet in Medina; developed in the early centuries after Muhammad, it was then closed off to critical revision for a millennium.
And that the laogai system and the brutal repression of freedom of thought, conscience and speech, the most basic of human rights, will remain a festering sore on the China dream until it is addressed and removed.
"@Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz" is an always-poignant, often-powerful meditation on soul-deadening repressions of human thought and feeling.
As far back as 1881, Mr. Pendergrast notes, the writer George Beard, in his book "American Nervousness," traced its causes to industrialization, an unstable economy, "too much freedom of thought," "repression of turbulent emotions," overspecialization and, above all, the pressure of time.
In China, said McEwan, "to censor daily the internet alone, the Chinese government employs as many as fifty thousand bureaucrats – a level of thought repression unprecedented in human history".
However, the repression of women is not, and never was, a uniquely Islamic problem, and so to use it as part of a broader argument against the influence of a single religion or system of thought is entirely bogus.
Come, leaders of thought!
The influence of thought".
