Many people consider them as brutal portrayal that comes from the nature of Islam while these are describing the brutal bullshit which comes from the nature of people. As a matter of fact, God is liberating us. If His Word touches and you follows them, you can get rid of your earthly yokes. If not, you will become a prisoner. You put either these yokes on yourself for reasons of limited vision, passions, going astray, racism, national chauvinism, prejudice, licking the ass of your boss or leader or others put you in their yokes. Don't be mistaken, even the one who interpret your faith, can also put you in a yoke!Many commentators refer the following lines exclusively to unbelievers, who are bound by their limitations to their conception. But let us lay our hands on our hearts: cannot be applied these verses for some of the believers? I think of those who profess and practice their beliefs as a narcotic, in a bigotry, blindly following a brainwashed interpreter.

The Word is proved true against the greater part of them: for they do not believe. (Quran 36:7)

7:30, also 17:16. If people deliberately and obstinately refuse "to believe", i.e., to receive guidance and admonition, the result must be that Allah's grace and mercy are withdrawn from them. Their own perversity inevitably blocks up all channels for their correction.

We have put yokes round their necks right up to their chins, so that their heads are forced up (and they cannot see). (Quran 36:8)

Refusal of Allah's Light means less and less freedom of action for man: the yoke of sin is fastened round man's neck, and it gets more and more tightened, right up to the chin. 2. The head is forced up and kept in a stiff position, so that the mind becomes befogged. Moral obliquity taints the intellect. 3. In this state of deprivation of Grace leads to such a decline in spiritual vitality that the victim can neither progress nor turn back.

And We have put a bar in front of them and a bar behind them, and further, We have covered them up; so that they cannot see. (Quran 36:9)

Their retreat is cut off and their progress is impossible. Further the Light that should come from above is cut off, so that they become totally devoid of any hope, and the last gleam of any spiritual understanding is extinguished in them.

The state of being locked into a yoke does not stop at an addictive pursuit of a particular passion, theme, human attitude, but bars are formed in front of and behind the man. This man keeps his/her thinking only within these limits. An example from life is drugs, alcohol, but accepting one's words without thinking, even when he/she calls for committing sin.
It is not the word of the Quran that is brutal, but the reality you fall into and become addicted to.
If you are lying on a hospital bed and only one kidney can save your life, you will not ask who the donor is! If the flood is fetching you and a hand reaches towards you to pull you out of the swirling water, you won't ask to whom that hand belongs to!
Get rid of your prejudices, your yokes, for it can save life in this world and the hereafter.