Dune: A middle-eastern analogy?

Hundegesicht

Manly Studmuffin
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http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2007-09-09.shtml
Orson Scott Card said:
There was considerable irony in Dune's use of Arabic culture and language as the explicit basis of the "Fremen," the desert dwellers who become the source of Paul Atreides power and, when he unleashes them, the scourge of the universe.
Herbert traces the roots of Fremen culture from world to world, and makes it clear that, while the specifics of Islamic belief are never laid out, the customs and culture of these people have been Muslim all along. (One of the great sources of their seething anger against the empire is that they have been denied the right to the Haj -- the pilgrimage that Muslims make to Mecca.)
The emotional core of the novel, then, comes from a T.E. Lawrence-like character, Paul Atreides, coming to dwell with and learning to live as an Arab Muslim, until he is able to lead them to victorious battle.
Paul, being a non-Muslim, treats the idea of jihad as an abhorrent one; he long tries to resist the blood and horror of such a thing, though by the end of the book he has given up and realizes that the jihad will happen and cannot be prevented or even controlled.
So here's the thought that occurred to me during such passages of Dune: What if Osama bin Laden somehow read Dune during his formative years? Or, if he did not read it himself, certainly there were Arab Muslim students in America who did read it, and the book might well have been part of the reason they became receptive to Osama's ideas.
Because a Muslim would not read this book the same way I did. To an Arab Muslim, the Arabic words and names would leap off the page; the Fremen characters would be the ones an Arab reader would most identify with.
Such a reader would not feel any of Paul Atreides' reluctance for jihad -- on the contrary, he would be hoping Paul would fail to stop the jihad.
And when, at the end of the book, the Arab jihad is triumphant, this reader -- Osama or another of his ideology -- would not only feel great emotional satisfaction, he would have the blueprint for his own future.
Because the Fremen in Dune triumph, not just because of the force of their arms or their courage in battle, but because they control the only source of the "Spice," a substance only created in the complex desert ecology of Arrakis, the planet they control. Without Spice the starships cannot navigate, and interstellar trade would grind to a halt.
The whole economy of the interstellar empire is dependent on and therefore under the ultimate control of the Fremen. Anything the offworlders do to them will hurt the offworlders far more than it hurts the Fremen. The parallel with oil is obvious.
I can just see such a reader thinking, This isn't fiction. This is the future. This is why jihad not only can work but must work; we lack only a leader to show us the way. The novel made it a European (in culture) who comes to the poor Fremen and leads them, but this is nonsense.
To such a reader, the true founder of the victory of the Fremen is Liet Kynes, the native-born Fremen who studied offworld science and then came home and, under the noses of their colonial rulers, prepared the Fremen for jihad and victory.
Remember that Herbert wrote Dune in the 1960s, before the first oil embargo, before any Islamist government was ever formed.
Whether Dune had any causal influence on the rise of Al Qaeda, Herbert certainly did a superb job of predicting the rise and the power of such an ideology. I would be surprised if there were not, among the followers of Osama bin Laden, at least a few readers of Dune for whom this book feels like their future, their identity, their dream.
In other words, Herbert got it horribly right.
Meanwhile, it's one of the seminal novels of science fiction, and one of the most important novels in the English language in the second half of the twentieth century. It's a shame that it is only taught and discussed in classes on science fiction instead of taking its rightful place in literary studies.
It is laughable to think of some of the trivial books from the same period that are taught -- by professors who sneer at all science fiction. They still celebrate literature about the adolescent "counterculture" of the 1960s, while the fiction that was capturing the imagination of the best and brightest of that generation, and which still bears a significant relationship to the real world, is ignored.
I guess that's what the ivory tower is all about.

A excerpt that stood out to me from a rather long article by Orson Scott Card. (the author of Ender's Game) I noticed the ties between the Fremen and Muslims the first time I read it myself (it seemed similar to the story of Lawrence of Arabia), and this article makes a lot of sense to me. What do you guys think? Is Dune an accurate prediction of the future of Arabic countries, or are the events of the past 30 years coinciding with it just a coincidence?
 
If Bin Laden was influenced by Dune, he did not read the sequels. Since, if you read the series, you will find that the Freemen victory results in the destruction of their society.
 
Dune is a great book, but I don't think its that influential.
 
I think you guys are misreading the article. He isn't saying Dune caused Osama or other terrorists to start Al Qaeda, just that it accurately predicted them becoming a power in the world, and speculates that maybe some of the original readers back in the 60s were members. Obviously, it'd take more than a modern sci-fi book to influence a movement that large, but it's still spooky how closely the future in Dune mirrors our Middle East.
 
Yes, I saw those parallers when I was ten. :D

It's not really rocket science to figure it out that there are similarities to our current situation.
 
I think you guys are misreading the article. He isn't saying Dune caused Osama or other terrorists to start Al Qaeda, just that it accurately predicted them becoming a power in the world, and speculates that maybe some of the original readers back in the 60s were members. Obviously, it'd take more than a modern sci-fi book to influence a movement that large, but it's still spooky how closely the future in Dune mirrors our Middle East.

It is quite spooky how the future in Dune mirrors... just about everything. Frank Herbert was a great writer.
 
Over at Arrakeen forum (link is in my sig), we've been discussing this very topic.

The first draft of Dune had nothing to do with religion. It was all about harvesting the spice. And that didn't have all the "he who controls the spice controls the Universe" aspect; it was simply a feud between two Great Houses over who could produce more spice for the Emperor. The characters' names were different, and it was the Duke Leto character who was the hero of the story, not the Paul character.

The one constant that remained throughout the various drafts of Dune was the spice, the sandworms, and their ecological interrelationship with their environment. Frank Herbert gradually added other literary and plot ingredients until the final version, which had the rich mixture of ecology, religion, politics, space travel, etc.

The idea of any of the al-Qaeda members reading Dune is something I'd never considered before... interesting.
 
The analogy is only there if you wish to see it.

You could add a real-world metaphor to any epic Sci-Fi story.

Sci-Fi tends to borrow from the times it is written in as a matter of course.

...

And it's the "times" for the novel Dune that make it so interesting. If it was a modern novel, I'd just claim the author was ripping from world events. Dune was written in 1965.

What makes it so weird is that Herbert very clearly based the Fremen in his books on a future extrapolation of the Muslims of *his* time, who hadn't started strapping bombs on their bodies yet. But, he managed accurately predict our current situation. It shows a certain level of admirable insight. Did any political scientists in the 60s predict Al-Qaeda, or our War On Terror?
 
And it's the "times" for the novel Dune that make it so interesting. If it was a modern novel, I'd just claim the author was ripping from world events. Dune was written in 1965.

What makes it so weird is that Herbert very clearly based the Fremen in his books on a future extrapolation of the Muslims of *his* time, who hadn't started strapping bombs on their bodies yet. But, he managed accurately predict our current situation. It shows a certain level of admirable insight. Did any political scientists in the 60s predict Al-Qaeda, or our War On Terror?

No, but I imagine that they did see Arab nationalism with a healthy dose of islamism for flavour. It's been awhile since I've read the Dune series, but from what I recall, there are more similarities to arab states than Islam per se, and most issues dealing with those (oil supplies and a more violent society, for eg)would likely have been pretty obvious at the time.

In fact, the story to me seems more like a case of classic anti-colonial nationalist struggle, like those going on in the middle east, southeast asia and africa at the time.
 
Anyone who followed the post WWI period could see the potential offered by religion in manipulating people in the Middle East. I think Dune's author got the idea for the Fremen from the arab rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, and Paul Atreides from T. E. Lawrence's self described role as a foreign leader there.
 
The more I think about it, the more it makes sense...
Whether or not Herbert intended the analogy, it adds another level of depth to an already superb story.

S'pose we could always ask Brian...
 
dune is clearly a middle eastern analogy because it has sand
 
dune is clearly a middle eastern analogy because it has sand

Well, it could be vague analogy about the United States for example. I'm sure US has more sand then uh, say... Iraq or Iran.
 
The middle east analogy is only superficial... someone who dwells on it either missed the point, or stopped reading WAY to early.
 
The parallel I saw when I read "Dune" was the resource one - spice in Dune = oil in the real world. That is, he might have
been making a statement of the consequences of being dependent on something that someone else controls.
 
The middle east analogy is only superficial... someone who dwells on it either missed the point, or stopped reading WAY to early.

I agree. The deeper ones were about destiny/fate/universe/time's grip on humanity. Even though Paul, Leto, others could see the future, they had no power or control to stop or change it. The same went for there vision of humanities extinction by 1, not growing and become complacent and 2, A great enemy far away. So the Golden path had to be more then just a scattering (you can't change the future/destiny/fate). You had to free destiny/fate's grip on man. Enter Siona, breed to not be seen by prescient vision. The same vision that can see the future and (find) people and items in the present. No-ships can also not be see by prescient vision. They work by taking the ship outside (freeing from) the universe.

Now some people well have a different take on the book then I did. They wont think that the and Golden path and Siona had to do with freeing humanity from destiny/fate/futures grip. But those are the deeper meanings of the book. At the surface of the book, its was pretty clear spice=oil, Dune= middle East, and ect ect.
 
http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2007-09-09.shtml


A excerpt that stood out to me from a rather long article by Orson Scott Card. (the author of Ender's Game) I noticed the ties between the Fremen and Muslims the first time I read it myself (it seemed similar to the story of Lawrence of Arabia), and this article makes a lot of sense to me. What do you guys think? Is Dune an accurate prediction of the future of Arabic countries, or are the events of the past 30 years coinciding with it just a coincidence?

It's pretty obvious that Fremen are Arabs, and I also saw similarities to "Sieben Säulen der Weisheit"(T.E. Lawrence's autobiographic novell).
His idea that this influenced actual arabs is bollocks though, the concept of jihad exists since Islam exists, most muslim countries got that way by jihad.
As for the future: IIR correctly the navigators would die off after some days without spice. We wouldn't die off after some days without oil. But after some time with shortages of everykind, including food, the sympathy for the people denying us the oil would rapidly decline, and the arab world wouldn't stand a chance even against a portion of western military might.
 
If Bin Laden was influenced by Dune, he did not read the sequels. Since, if you read the series, you will find that the Freemen victory results in the destruction of their society.

Ehe, nice catch. Would most likely work out that way, no infidels, no dangers, let's start a "decadent" western lifestyle.
 
The more I think about it, the more it makes sense...
Whether or not Herbert intended the analogy, it adds another level of depth to an already superb story.

S'pose we could always ask Brian...
:shake: If you've read the pre/sequels, you should have realized that Brian is utterly clueless about the spirit and intent Frank Herbert meant for the Dune series.

Another analogy these days (particularly in Alberta) is that spice = water. Red Deer has already been having a frustrating time with other municipalities and corporations that want to divert clean water from the Red Deer River just to make it easier for their drilling procedures. They could easily use already-contaminated water, but they don't want to because it's "too expensive." :mad:
 
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