Butlerian Jihad - The Dune Encyclopedia

The Dune Encyclopedia (1984) by Willis E. McNelly presents an extended chronicle and analysis of the Butlerian Jihad. According to McNelly, he and Frank Herbert had planned to expand this version into a prequel novel to Dune, but Herbert's death two years later prevented the work from being completed.

The name we use for the period implies an answer to the question: If we call those events "The Butlerian Jihad," we side with the historians who define as "great" those individuals who move the mass of humankind in a new direction; if we use the term "The Great Revolt," we ally ourselves with those who see "leaders" as simply the front rank of a humanity moving in the direction the masses determine. —The Dune Encyclopedia

In this version, the Jihad is named for Jehanne Butler. Trained as both a priestess and a Bene Gesserit on the planet Komos, Jehanne marries Thet'r Butler late in life. Due to her Bene Gesserit training, a pregnant Jehanne is in contact with her developing fetus and knows the state of its health and development. After waking from the anesthesia given during delivery, she is shocked to be told that the fetus had been malformed and the infant therapeutically aborted. She later discovers through investigation that her child had in fact been healthy, but that the hospital director, the first self-programming computer on the planet, had been secretly carrying out a policy of unjustified abortions.

This discovery triggers further investigation into the extent to which such machines had been controlling society and altering the emotional and intellectual characteristics of planetary populations over a course of centuries. During the course of these investigations, the chief priestess of Komos, Urania, interrogates one of the chief computer engineers, Doctor G. Demlen. She observes that he is an arrogant and unrepentant man, and she is shocked to witness his pride in his machines. Urania tells him that his work violates the fundamental principles of respect for human life and is an offense to the worship of the Goddess.

At the mention of the Goddess, Demlen exploded in a fit of acid and honest 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 to 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 moment of sacrilege was the beginning of the Jihad. The priestesses of the planet met that night, and the next day, the Jihad began to be preached to the faithful of Komos, against "the thinking machines and all who find their gods within them."

Jehanne argues against it, knowing the horrors that a jihad would bring. In spite of this, she lets her name be used and serves as the jihad's leader for its first twenty years. During this time, the battles are "planned and led by a tactical genius, whose concern for the lives of her soldiers and of her enemies is the dominant element." After her death, this element of the campaigns disappears.

The Dune Encyclopedia version was later declared non-canonical by the Herbert estate.