Dune and the Most Influential Man in History

We compare the book and movie Dune with a certain 7th century historical figure who uniquely founded a great religion and a world empire.  

Transcript

Dune and the Most Influential Person in History

March 2024

“When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it’s too late.”

Frank Herbert, from the Book Dune

“The eye that looks ahead to the safe course is closed forever.” 

Paul Atreides from the Frank Herbert book Dune

“She said purpose, and he felt the word buffet him, reinfecting him with terrible purpose.”

Frank Herbert from the Book Dune

“If greatness of purpose, smallness of means, and astonishing results are the three criteria of a human genius, who could dare compare any great man in history with Muhammad? 

Philosopher, orator, apostle, legislator, warrior, conqueror of ideas, restorer of rational dogmas, of a cult without images, the founder of twenty terrestrial empires, and of one spiritual Empire: that is Mohammad. As regards all the standards by which human greatness may be measured, we may well ask is there any man greater than he?”

 Alphonse de Lamartine, History of Turkey

“The greatest jihad is to battle your own soul, to fight the evil within yourself.”

The Prophet Mohammad

The following is the story of Dune and Mohammad, founders of Islam. To the devoted Muslim, Mohammad was the messenger of God, of Allah, with the latter acting through the former. For this piece, I am not looking through the prism of religion but rather that of the history of Mohammad, the historical figure. This is not a debate between my religion, that of Christianity, and Islam. It is a debate on the historical influence of Mohammad compared with that of other people. It is essential to understand that context. 

Like so many great works of art, the experience of those consuming the pieces can transcend the artist’s original vision. Frank Herbert’s Dune is one example. For some observers, including the following from his native Oregon, it was a story about the environment. 

The idea for the desert planet of Dune was based on Herbert’s experiences at the Oregon Dunes during the 1950s. The Oregon Dunes are fifty-four miles long, from Heceta Head north of Florence to Cape Arago just south of Coos Bay. Well over 100,000 years old, this dune complex of roughly 40,000 acres covers the largest area of any dune system on the West Coast of North America.

According to this view, Herbert imagined a world that consisted only of dunes, and his environmental message influenced science fiction writers and environmentalists, especially during the 1960s and 1970s. “They Stopped the Moving Sands,” an unfinished short story he wrote based on the Dunes, helped him develop the idea of a desert world, which he imagined as a planet consumed by moving dunes caused by environmental destruction. He would call the planet Arrakis. Herbert’s work inspired the desert planet of Tatooine in the Star Wars saga. So there is Herbert, the environmentalist.

Another take had to do more with exploiting the Middle Eastern world, specifically oil, a stand-in for Herbert’s Spice, the most valuable substance in the Galaxy. The aptly titled Will Scifi, writing for Silk, notes of the book:

Arrakis, with its desert landscape and vital resource, is a thinly veiled stand-in for the Middle East and its oil. Herbert’s depiction of the planet’s harsh environment and the exploitation of its resources by off-world entities mirrors the colonial and neocolonial exploitation of the Middle East’s oil reserves. The Fremen, the indigenous people of Arrakis, represent the marginalized populations subjected to the whims of distant governments and corporations. Their struggle for autonomy and control over their homeland and resources reflects Middle Eastern populations’ historical and contemporary struggles against Western intervention and exploitation.

And the prophet Paul Atreides? SciFi has a take on that as well.  

Paul Atreides, the protagonist of “Dune,” is a complex figure whose journey from exiled noble to messianic leader of the Fremen encapsulates the allure and peril of the Western savior complex. His rise to power among the Fremen and his role in their liberation struggle can be seen as an allegory for the way Western powers have often positioned themselves as the “saviors” of colonized peoples. However, Herbert complicates this narrative by highlighting the destructive consequences of Paul’s crusade and the cyclical nature of power and oppression. This serves as a critique of the notion that liberation can be bestowed from without, emphasizing instead the importance of self-determination and the dangers inherent in external intervention.

In this piece by Zach Loveall, imperialism and environmentalism are melded together.  

Dune” rejects the vision of wilderness as an escape. Instead of a place to run away from the problems in Arrakis, nature is a revolutionary force. The dream of a green Arrakis is inseparable from the dream of overthrowing the imperialist powers that control the planet. It’s a way for the Fremen to regain control of their home, remaking it to their liking as they change its ecology and climate. Destroying the desert would remove the valuable spice deposits on which the galaxy-spanning Empire depends for profitable space travel.

By this reckoning, without the exploitation by the imperial powers, whether Harkonnen or Atreides, the Fremen would be living blissful lives. That this narrative is the belief of so many left-wing anti-colonists is a pipe dream. I, too, am anti-colonial. I would not desire to live as a subject of an empire any more than the most devoted rebel. But I have seen too many self-governing countries make an absolute mess of their affairs to have this delusion. From Venezuela to Pakistan to Rwanda, the ability of native peoples to muck up their own countries is legion—and pre-Columbian Americas. There were the exploitive Aztecs whose vassals were brutally subjugated. The Incan Empire was a tiny minority, about 100,000, ruling over millions. In several North American tribes, the wholesale slaughter of one tribe at the hands of another was discovered through archeological exploration. I am not excusing Western imperialism, but I find it odd that the relativism and objectivity that the left so often implements in their thinking about Europe is lost when it comes to non-Europeans.  

However, environmentalism and imperialism aside, there is another narrative. A man of educated birth comes along and unites a desert people. In over 25 centuries, these people have never been united, existing as a series of disparate tribes. This man is considered a prophet. He knows things no one else knows. Through the force of his personality and his exceptional knowledge, he not only brings the desert people together but harnesses their collective power to conquer an empire (well, several, actually, but bear with me, one of the empires was the inheritor of Rome another that of Cyrus the Great). This man has a name that sounds Middle Eastern in nature. 

I am talking of Mohammad and Paul Atreides or his Fremen name, Muad’Dib Usu.  

According to Ali Karjoo-Ravary, assistant professor of Islamic Studies at Bucknell, writing of Dune.  

Islam is pretty pervasive throughout the books, and it’s something that was always noticed both by his editors as well as audiences. One of the closest parallels is the Fremen people themselves, who seem to be inspired by Bedouin, a lot of the indigenous peoples of northern Africa and the Middle East. But if you linguistically look at it, and if you look at the sort of how he describes religion in this place over 20,000 years in the future, Islam is part and parcel of the way everything is some kind of articulated without being the Islam of today. But clearly, its presence and influence are everywhere. And Herbert himself was actually very upfront about it.

As with any fiction with many influences, a direct, point-by-point comparison is inapt. 

Paul’s mother, for example, belongs to an order of sorceresses who indirectly manage the governance of a galactic empire and even set up Paul for his inheritance, named in the book as the Lisan al Gaib and the Kwisatz Haderach. Paul’s father is a senior nobleman within this Empire, and it is both of their legacies that craft Paul’s unique nature. Paul loses his father as a teen, but not before this influence is felt. Mohammad’s father, however, Abdullah ibn Abd al-Muttalib, the son of a tribal leader, died before Mohammad’s birth. His mother, Amina bint Wahb, died when he was six. In Dune, Paul’s parents are critical of the story; Mohammad is an orphan. 

In Mohammad’s 6th and 7th century world, there was no all-pervasive element driving the rise and fall of entire empires. Though oil was popular as a tool for lamps, it was not the all-pervasive, most valuable substance in the world that it has been over the past 140 years. So Dune’s Spice is more of a 20th-century concept.    

In Dune, the rise of Paul was, as noted, a manipulation by his mother’s order. That Paul actually is the prophet that was foretold and his breaking out of the power of that order, again, is different from history. 

Mohammad and Islam were, historically, his creation.  

If the question is whether Dune is environmentalism, imperialism, colonialism, and Islam, my answer is yes. However, because Paul is at the center of the story, we see most of it from his point of view; I am concentrating on that aspect of the story and how it illuminates one of the most fascinating figures in history. Many Western readers have heard of Mohammad and seen him in history books. But could they name him as the Most influential man who ever lived?  

A few weeks ago, I cited Michael Hart’s magisterial study of the Most Influential Men Ever to Live to help explain ranking systems. I continue to think that influence is a good metric, though again, it is subject to subjectiveness. Yet, consider the core of Hart’s argument. 

He was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular levels. Of humble origins, Mohammad founded and promulgated one of the world’s great religions and became an immensely effective political leader. Today, 13 centuries after his death, his influence is still powerful and pervasive.   

Empire builders have created states that have lasted for centuries. Five hundred years after Genghis Kahn, Tartars ruled Crimea thousands of miles from Mongolia. Alexander’s successor generals ruled for hundreds of years after his death. 

There have been religious leaders such as Zoroaster, Mani, and Confucius whose religions lasted centuries after their deaths, even if they do not command large numbers of adherents today. In our present time, Buddhism and Jesus Christ’s religion affect billions. In the latter case, nearly 2 billion people on Earth have claimed to be Christians, still many more than there are Muslims. Yet only a single person, Mohammad, founded a great religion, wrote its fundamental tenets, and built the mechanism for the spread of that religion, a world empire.  

Another key point made by Hart is that many influential historical figures had the advantage of being born at the center of events. Would Christianity have had the opportunity to flourish as it did without being founded within the greatest ancient Empire in history? The true promulgator of Christianity, Paul of Tarsus, was able to travel throughout the Empire with major impediments. And unlike Jesus or the Apostle Peter, Paul was actually a Roman citizen.  

Buddha was born a prince in India, a country, then as now, one of power. But Arabia had always been on the fringe of great Empires such as those of Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Iranian plains, or later, Rome itself. Mecca was not a significant city in a great empire but became so entirely through Mohammad’s actions.  

Another critical dichotomy from Christianity is that Mohammad crafted the core tenets. Adds Hart. 

Mohammad, however, was responsible for both the theology of Islam and its main ethical and moral principles. He is the author of the Muslim holy scriptures, the Quran, a collection of Mohammad’s insights that he believed had been directly revealed to him by Allah. 

Yet it was not as if Islam grew up entirely with influence. There were Jewish inspirations from centuries of contact between Jews and the Arab tribes. And Mohammad was keen to link Islam to the Jewish past. In Surah 19, verses 41-42, the following comments on Abraham or Ibrahim, a fairly common name today: 19:41 Also mention in the Book (the story of) Abraham: He was a man of Truth, a prophet. 19:42 Behold, he said to his father: “O my father! Why worship that which heareth not and seeth not, and can profit thee nothing? In 11:74, when fear had passed from (the mind of) Abraham, and the glad tidings had reached him, he began to plead with us for Lut’s people.

The Quran also shows that Christianity became the dominant religion in the Levant and Egypt 600 years ago. Jesus (Isa) is mentioned ninety-seven times in ninety-three verses of the Quran. He is called the Spirit of God seven different times.  

In fact, Islam is much more tied to the Abrahamic religions than to Zoroastrianism, which is practiced in Sassanid Persia. Zoroaster is not mentioned in the Quran. Yet the Quran affirms that each nation has been sent a prophet of its own (16:36) in its own language (14:4). This provided a model through which Zoroaster could be seen as a prophet. 

All this meant that when Islam began its mass conversions throughout its newly won Empire, there were aspects familiar to Christians, making it easy to win them over much more quickly (and the swords helped as well). Whereas it took Christianity centuries to convert vast populations, Islam was implemented in a much shorter time because the underpinnings were established at its inception.  

In the case of Christianity, the first of the four gospels, Matthew, was written around 70 CE, and the last one, John, was probably written around 95 CE. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, for me, one of the defining texts of Christianity and certainly among the greatest works of Western literature, was written sometime around 50 CE. These were written decades after Jesus’s death; none of these writers have met Jesus.  

The first and second Caliphs, Abu Bakr and Umar ibn al-Khattab were among the first conquerors. They knew Mohammad personally and had his works in hand when sallying forth into the Middle East. The other fascinating aspect of Mohammad was that as he executed his accomplishments, he was approaching middle age. He was in his 40s when he began evangelizing and began the unification of the Arab tribes.  

In Dune, the Fremen are the best larger foes because of their discipline and passion. It was the same for the Arabs. They were almost always outnumbered when they conquered the levant, Iraq, Iran, North Africa, Central Asia, Pakistan, and Spain. They did have the advantage that the Byzantine and Persian Empires had fought each other to an exhausting standstill. Yet an argument could be made that these Empires boosted battle-hardened troops, and the Arabs crushed them. Unlike the Sassanids, I should note that the Byzantines endured for centuries after Mohammad. The Byzantines never regained an offensive footing and played a delaying game until 1453, when the Islamic-converted Ottoman Turks ended them.  

Though we tend to think of Arabs and Islam as a combination, especially with the paramount status of Arabic as the language of Islam, today, the largest Islamic nation by population is Indonesia. Other nations, such as Malaysia and Brunei, are Islamic. And vast numbers of Indians as well, especially in the Northwest of that nation.

Hart concludes with an argument about inevitability. One example is Simon Bolivar, who helped liberate South America. Had Bolivar never existed, the Spanish colonies would have been liberated. In the movie Dune, there is a certain inevitability of Paul given the machinations of the Bene Gesseret.  

Yet, historically, there was nothing inevitable about Islam. The creation of an Arab empire based on a religion written in Arabic emanating from Arabia had never been done before. The melding of a world religion with the generation of a world empire had never been done before nor since.  

Hart concludes:

We see, then, that the Arab conquests of the seventh century have continued to play an important role in human history, down to the present day. I feel this unparalleled combination of secular and religious influence entitles Mohammad to be considered the most influential single figure in history. 

Latin, Aramaic, and Ancient Hebrew are gone. But Arabic is the language of nations ranging from Morocco to Iraq. We have beautiful architecture, from Al Hambra in Spain to the Gur-e-Amir in Samarkand, which is modern-day, owing to Mohammad. Also, the issues facing Israel and Palestine have their roots in Mohammad’s actions. So, the good and the bad co-mingle in the lives of billions over 15 centuries.  

Paul Atreides was a prophetic conqueror but also a work of fiction. Mohammad was real and another exemplar of how, as great as fiction can be, the stories of humanity are even more fascinating.