Ai Weiwei Quotes
If there is no free speech, every single life has lived in vain
Ai, Weiwei. Weiwei-isms. Edited by Larry Warsh, Princeton University Press, 2012, p. 45.
He was announcing that a lecturer Kevin Barrett would not be fired from the University. Barrett had taken the position with his students that the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center could not have been done by a handful of terrorists and it must have done by or with the complicity and help of forces inside the United States government. There had been outrage throughout the country with demands by many politicians for his ouster. The University did not bend to the political pressure even in the case where there was such an outrageous and incorrect view.
Spinoza’s ideas were considered so radical and dangerous that he was the only man in history who was excommunicated by the Catholics, the Jews and the Muslims. However, we see in Spinoza the observations and foundations of what would become American and then international views of human rights.
This became a critically important quotation a half century after it was made. Judge Hand articulated the majority Western and Judeo-Christian value proposition between dissent and heresy. However, for the majority of the Islamic world, the reverse represents the majority value that is held. There is a minority in the West that agrees that avoidance of heresy is paramount and a minority of the Muslim world that agrees that the protection of dissent is the more important value, but the two civilizations were at odds in the 20th and 21st centuries. However, Islam is about 600 years younger than Christianity. 600 years ago, the Christian world agreed with the Muslim society and prevention of heresy was the more important value. The Reformation and the enlightenment followed by the world example of America produced a transformation and this may occur in the majority of the Islamic world in time.
Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist and activist. Ai grew up in the far north-west of China, where he lived under harsh conditions due to his father's exile. As an activist, he has been openly critical of the Chinese Government's stance on democracy and human rights. He investigated government corruption and cover-ups, in particular the Sichuan schools corruption scandal following the collapse of "tofu-dreg schools" in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In 2011, Ai Weiwei was arrested at Beijing Capital International Airport on 3 April, for "economic crimes". He was detained for 81 days without charge. Ai Weiwei emerged as a vital instigator in Chinese cultural development, an architect of Chinese modernism, and one of the nation's most vocal political commentators.
