The Butlerian Jihad

Jehanne [Butler] was trained as a priestess on

Komos and also as a Bene Gesserit. Rather
than following the career of a priestess, either
from her own decision or that of her order, she
married Thet'r Butler, the Logistos of Xania,
one of the ten administrative districts on
Komos. In the same year as their marriage,
(205 B.G.), Jehanne went to the capitol of
Pylos to enter the hospital for the birth of a
child. Since both parents had married late in
life for their culture, they were especially
eager for this birth. When on the delivery
table, Jehanne was anesthetized; when she
awoke, she and her husband were informed
that their daughter, Sarah, had been aborted.
The hospital explained that the fetus had been
too deformed to survive. The abortion was
described as therapeutic.
Jehanne's control of her own body, which as a
result of her Bene Gesserit training extended
beyond those muscle systems usually thought
of as automatic, had permitted a deep
knowledge of the growth of her child within
the womb. She was convinced that it was
impossible for her child to have been so
grievously malformed as the hospital had
described. In time, Jehanne came to believe
that her child's death had at best been
unnecessary. Using the access to official
records provided by Thet'r's position as
Logistos, she discovered within the archives of
the hospital evidence that the hospital director
the first self-programming machine on
Komos had instituted a program of
unjustified abortions. Armed with this
information, she approached the priestesses of
Kubebe for their aid in creating a movement
against the domination by Richese.
At the same time that these overtures were
being made to the priestesses, Jehanne and
Thet'r had begun the formation of a secular
organization. Using Thet'r's administrative
abilities, and Jehanne's gifts of rhetoric,

amplified by her Bene Gesserit schooling, a

Front for the End of Koman Exploitation was
formed.
Their movement was a speedy success, as was
their request of the priestesses for aid.
Contrary to some cynical opinions, the
priestesses were far too well entrenched
within a society of believers for their position
to have been threatened. Rather, the
priestesses likely entered the struggle for the
same reason that the rest of the Komans did
they were appalled by the evidence Jehanne
was able to put forward concerning the actions
of the hospital director, and they agreed that
the time had come to move against Richese.
The coup on Komos was the first example of
the organizational genius of Thet'r Butler and
the tactical brilliance of Jehanne: the choice of
the tribute collection week as the occasion for
the coup, the seizure of the tribute fleet for
transport to Richese, the timing and execution
of a lengthy and intricate plan which achieved
total surprise and an almost bloodless victory.
The Komans went to Richese with nothing
more than a successful revolution in mind.
They discovered there the extent to which their
hospital director was simply a reflection of a
state of society beyond their imagination. The
degree to which machines controlled the
population of Richese, and had altered the
emotional and intellectual characteristics of its
inhabitants over centuries, was literally
incredible to the Komans. Many of them never
entirely believed what they saw there.
The revelations on Richese produced a Jihad,
but it was not Jehanne who made that decision.
The priestesses of Kubebe were the principal
forces behind the change which occurred in the
ranks of the rebels. They were motivated by
their interrogations of the chief programmers
and scientists of Richese, many of whom had
been willing participants in the actions of the

machines in altering the population of Richese.

Perhaps the critical moment in these
interrogations occurred during the questioning
of a Doctor G. Demlen by the chief priestess of
Komos, Urania.
Demlen was an especially arrogant and
unrepentant man, whose disdain for his fellow
man's intelligence was equalled only by his
respect for his own and that of his
machines. As his quite prideful and voluntary
description of his work on Richese droned on,
Urania's feelings overcame her training and her
face began to betray her revulsion. Ultimately
even Demlen noticed, and interrupted his
stream of self- congratulatory candor to ask
what was upsetting her. Urania told him his
work violated fundamental principles of
respect for human life, not to mention the
offense to the worship of the Goddess.
At the mention of the Goddess, Demlen
exploded in a fit of honest and acid outrage,
and in his fury, after suggesting that there was
more worth reverence in one of his machines
than in the worship of "a supposed 'goddess'
invented by a clutch of bucolic bumpkins on a
pigsty of a planet," Demlen turned toward the
icon of Kubebe as if to spit on it. Before he
could commit the act, Urania had killed him
with her ceremonial knife.
That night the priestesses met in council, and
the next morning Jihad began to be preached
to the faithful of Komos, against "the thinking

machines and all who find their gods within

them."
Far from being eager for this, Jehanne argued
against it. Her statements, insofar as we can
construct them, seem to have anticipated much
of what was to happen in the coming years
the growing ruthlessness of the crusaders, the
atrocities, the deaths of so many innocents.
But the priestesses were not deterred. It was
not that they did not believe that these things
might happen. Rather, they resolved on the
Jihad in spite of this belief. Their horror before
the discoveries of Richese, and the certainty
that they would be duplicated on other
planets, their deep-rooted outrage at the
insult to their Goddess and their religion
these made their minds firm. Too many
analyses of the origins of the Jihad have
ignored this motivation the people of
Komos believed their religion. So too did
Jehanne; but her beliefs were tempered with
mercy and foresight to a degree not true of the
priestesses.
Jehanne could not have been dislodged as the
leader of the movement, even had anyone
wished it. But from this moment there was a
certain tension within the leadership of the
Jihad. On the one hand there was Jehanne,
urging mercy and restraint; on the other was
Urania whose goal was the extirpation of any
hint of machine domination of humans, and
who was willing to sacrifice much, and many,
to achieve it.