In this article, I engage with the backstory to Frank Herbert’s Dune saga, viz. The Butlerian Jihad, tracing its genealogy, and considering its possible relevance for thinking about and motivating an Islamicate response to artificial intelligence (AI) and cognate technologies. I argue the latter is a colonising phenomenon deployed along necropolitical lines against “the wretched of the earth”. My argument unfolds in a “nested structure”, beginning with an overview of The Butlerian Jihad and how it features in the Dune universe. I particularly examine how Herbert uses the term jihad and conflates it with crusade and explore a possible genealogy of The Butlerian Jihad , tracing its inspiration to “The Book of The Machines” in Samuel Butler’s novel Erewhon (1932 [1872]). Engaging with scholarly commentary on Butler’s work, I address implicit conceptions of class and race, particularly through the lenses of colonialism and the phenomenon of Other -ing. Considering Butler’s motivations for writing the novel, I explore how examining hauntology provides a pathway into a discussion of the potentialities of Luddism as a political project. Reframing Luddism along fugitive and decolonial lines, I conclude by exploring what it might mean to call for and enact a Butlerian Jihad today.
In Islamic thought, the economy is considered an integral part of the spiritual expression of human consciousness in the mortal world. Islamic economics, as a modern discipline, is related to the anti-colonial movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Scholars of the time envisioned an economic system different from that of the colonising powers and found the epistemological foundations for one in the Islamic tradition. Although Islamic banking has come far from its inception, Islamic economic philosophy has become a niche categorisation in the larger global economic order. Discourses in Islamic economics have been constructed against neoliberal economics, within the ontology and epistemology of modernity. The Islamisation of knowledge project has utilised a singular reliance on fiqh to halal-wash orthodox neoliberal economic institutions, products, and relations to assimilate them into Islamic economics in a superficial “Islamic” dressing of neoliberal economic paradigms. This paper argues that a decolonial stance in Islamic economics and a focus on epistemologies indigenous to Islamic discourse can eliminate this issue. Decoloniality in Islamic economics must counter the traditional dominance of European episteme and the financial interest in capitalist economics within the Islamic world by norm-setting entities such as the state of Saudi Arabia.
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 seismically reconfigured the ways both religion and particular religions are defined, characterized, and classified by numerous actors, including scholars, political officials, and subjects. In its wake, political and religious authorities established “The Muslims” as a threat; its memorialization by Britons in the immediate aftermath was one of heightened attention to Muslim involvement, in many cases outright assumption that Muslims were uniquely culpable for the revolts. However, its memorialization in the contemporary period downplays or entirely writes out Muslim involvement. Whereas British conceptualizations of rebels assumed Muslimness, the rebel heroes of today’s India are typified as Hindu martyrs, authentic champions whose actions encode India’s independence from all outside control. This authorizes a particular gloss of Indian history that, for the most part, rewrites history to paint Muslims as forever invaders, outsiders, illegal inhabitants and recasts the Rebellion as part of a pious nationalism to which Muslims cannot have access and in which they cannot participate. This essay describes a shift in memory and memorialization, the politics of such a shift, and the concept of pious nationalism.
