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Butlerian Jihad
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The Butlerian Jihad is a fictional crusade in Frank Herbert’s Dune universe against computers, thinking machines, and conscious robots. It began in 201 B.G. and ended in 108 B.G., after two generations of conflict. The revolt followed the spread of machines that made decisions for people and enabled a technocratic class to control ordinary populations. By its end, intelligent machines built by humans had been destroyed throughout the known worlds. The Jihad produced a central religious prohibition, preserved in the Orange Catholic Bible: humans may not create a machine in the likeness of a human mind. Computers and calculators were banned, and building or owning prohibited thinking-machine technology could carry an immediate death sentence. Non-thinking machines remained in use, while human institutions and specialized groups filled functions once handled by advanced computation. These included the mentat order, the Bene Gesserit, and the Spacing Guild; Ix developed non-thinking mechanical devices, while the Bene Tleilax supplied biological technologies. The aftermath also strengthened beliefs in human spiritual divinity and helped establish the feudal Corrino Empire, whose major powers included the Great Houses, Landsraad, CHOAM, Bene Gesserit, and Spacing Guild. The name may allude to Samuel Butler’s 1872 novel Erewhon, in which a society destroys machinery over fears that machines could supplant humanity.