“LThe crowd, which crowded the judgment tent, knowing that this was the famous satirist poet Baal, in his heyday possessor of the sharpest tongue and sharpest wit in Jahilia, began (despite all their efforts to prevent it) to laugh. (…) So he was sentenced to be beheaded within the hour, and as the soldiers carried him roughly from the tent to the place of execution, Baal shouted over his shoulder: “Whores and writers, Mahound. We are the ones you cannot forgive.” » This extract is from satanic verses, by Salman Rushdie, sums up why autocrats in all times and places cannot tolerate literature. Spirit, Tongue, Laughter and Immorality make the wrongdoers tremble…
