So already they're doing a retcon. "Jihad" and "Crusade" can both mean "holy war" but "crusade" doesn't always mean that. Context is critical in pinning down whether they mean the same basic thing, but even if they do, the nuances are different. If you take medieval era Crusades as an example, no doubt some of the participants really were into it for sincerely-held religious reasons. But many others weren't; they had numerous reasons for going on crusade, and many were simply out of self-interest - to make their fortunes, to achieve glory (and be noticed by the king and be granted rank, money, privileges, and power), or to avoid prison or execution for some crime they'd committed.
It's similar in Dune. Many Fremen participated in the Jihad because they sincerely believed that Muad'Dib was holy and it was necessary to bring this to other worlds. But there are others who just wanted to get off Arrakis and see other worlds. One of them, in Dune Messiah, states that he left because he wanted to see an ocean. It was something beyond the imagination of the Fremen at that time, that there could be so much water that you couldn't see across it, or that it could be so cold that it would freeze. Still others wanted to be rich, and they settled on the worlds they traveled to.
I can't find Commodore's post there, so if I'm missing any context for it, please help me out.Kyriakos said:Obviously a decision based on politics. I am not sure if in the books the jihad is in the end seen as negative (some characters who took part in it seem to think so). @Valka D'Ur would help with thatCommodore said:
The section of the Dune Encyclopedia that deals with Fremen religion is huge, and would take numerous posts to even summarize. For anyone who is seriously interested in this, I recommend tracking down a copy of the Encyclopedia (they're not cheap, though).
*puts on lecturer's hat*
Basically, the Fremen are also known as one branch of the Zensunni Wanderers, who follow a belief system that developed from a combination of Zen Buddhism and Sunni Islam. Considering that the events of Dune itself take place approximately 20,000 years from now, it's entirely believable that religions would blend and integrate various facets of others. Add to this the fact that after the Butlerian Jihad, it was realized that the best way to ensure that thinking machines not come back was to make them anathema... which necessitated rewriting the religious tenets people were taught to believe.
Thus the Orange Catholic Bible was hammered out at a retreat somewhere in Hawaii (information related in the Appendix of Dune). This document incorporated elements of all the major religions at that time, in order to make it accessible and relatable to the people of the Imperium. After that, millennia of generations of people were taught the tenet: "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind."
9/11 took place in 2001. The first miniseries was shown in 2000, but the second was shown in 2003. There were plenty of references to "jihad" and Leto's "Golden Path", which was to yet again remake the religion of the Imperium, which once again necessitated going out and forcing it on the people.^ Yeah
Djihad has that awful Muslim connotation, this evil terroristic 9/11 feel, that could bring unease to the mainstream American public.
Crusade, on the other hand, has the class and glamour of heroism and knights of old. It's a much more fitting term to describe the Event that lays at the foundation of our little heroes world order and adventures.
Which is more (apart from this good guys-bad guys split - and, you know, Muslim people tend to be pretty critical of the crusades), the terms are far from synonyms.
The Djihad can be an armed conflict but it can also be a personnal quest for sprirituality and self-improvement, which the universe of Dune is all about. The "Butlerian Jihad" also has an ecumenical ring to it, that is coherent with the whole thing and the later religions and the general philosophy of Dune.
I think the Saudis would love it if Holliwood acknowledged their religion as something other than the work of the devil (not to say Saudis have a monopoly on Islam). But it's a fact that the figure of the Russian has been replaced by the Arab as the bad guy of choice in many a Holliwood movie.
I don't think it's the Dune fans who can't handle the word "jihad."
The general connotation of "crusade" with "holy war" means that politicians (in Canada) using the word are suspected of violating, or intending to violate, the Charter of Rights clause that says government must not discriminate on the basis of religion.
Then the producers/writers are idiots. The Fremen religion is basically what you get if you throw Buddism and Sunni Islam into a blender, add various parts of a few other religions, allow several thousand years for it to settle down, and there you have it. An offshoot variety of Islam on a planet orbiting Canopus, millennia in the future, by a people who have been forced from planet to planet over those millennia, forever denied what they're seeking (hence the label "Zensunni Wanderers").
It should be possible for a thinking person to divorce this fictional variety of Sunni Islam from the real-history version.
It's amazing what will make some people flip out and get offended. I once got into a multiple-day argument over at TrekBBS due to one line in my sig: "Let's give it Riker. He'll eat anything!".
Anyone remember the old Life cereal TV commercial about Mikey? That's what inspired my sig, in combination with Riker's habit of eating all sorts of revolting stuff. Yet in spite of the fact that I've had this line in my sig for 13 years, it took over half that time for someone to notice and insist hysterically that I was body-shaming Jonathan Frakes, and how dare I do that?
There is a fundamental fact about Children of Dune that was weird enough in the novel, but audiences absolutely would not have accepted it on TV. The twins were played by young adult actors. But they were only supposed to be 9 years old. As Pre-Born, they were born with fully-functioning adult consciousness, so even though they were physically children, they were thinking at the level of someone in the vicinity of 30 years old (too lazy at the moment to look up how old Chani was when she gave birth to the twins).
There's a reference in the novel in which the Bene Gesserit, in an attempt to salvage the Atreides genes, want to breed the twins together - something the Fremen absolutely would not stand for, as incest is punished by death, and the dead persons' water is poured out on the desert, rather than added to the tribe's water. If the twins are only 9, that's something the audience wouldn't stand for, either.
Ditto the part of the novel about marriage. Ghanima's official husband is Leto II. But her actual husband, who was chosen for political purposes and because his genes measured up, is Farad'n Corrino (Irulan's nephew). There's a bit of dialogue near the end of the novel when Ghanima is talking to Farad'n about them having children, and he says, "You're a little young yet." She tells him, "Never say that to me again." Ghanima Atreides has an adult mind in a child's body, but the audience would only see a 9-year-old girl marrying a man more than twice her age.
When is this movie supposed to be coming out - this year or next? If it's next year, any references to "jihad" are going to set off some people because next year will be the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
