rtant questions One should ask not Why a woman1* but rather Why this woman' and Why did she succeed; The answers to these questions must be sought within Jehanne herself and within her society The simplest answer to the question Why this woman9 is of course that it was her child who was murdered But this is obvious ly inadequate These abortions had been going on for two years but Jehanne was the first we know of to suspect the hospital and act on that suspicion There may have been others but Jehanne is the one we know of because she succeeded Thus stated the mat ter of the death of Sarah Butler is placed in perspective it was the motivation for Jehanne and Thet r but it was not the reason for their success Their rebellion which produced Jihad the secret of her leadership-those are to be BUTLER 141 BUTLERIAN JIHAD found in the combination of the social characteristics of Komos and the character of Jehanne Butter One has only to remember the descriptions of Jehanne s presence and its effect on others Her personality seems to have had such a strong impact on those she encountered that it could be felt physically, many compared meeting her for the first time to the sensation of being struck The emotions pro duced m others were not those associated with fear however The words most often used to describe her presence asserted a combination of compassion and intelligence so great as to produce what one observer, in a phrase later known to billions, saw as "a living fiame of a woman ' But this was not fire as the devourer, it was flame as the beacon, the guide This flame led the crusade for twenty years When it died the Jihad became the flame itself, and this would be the fire of destruction Two points remain to be made First of all, no matter how unusual a person Jehanne might have been, the genesis and success of the Jihad are not explainable solely by reference to any individual Even such a person as Jehanne could not have led a successful crusade of this sort had it not been for the peculiar combination of conditions offered by the planet of Komos and its relation to Richese How many such rebellions led perhaps by men or women as unusual as Jehanne, failed for lack of the circumstances that produced the "agar for rebellion' that obtained on Komos7 We shall never know, for they did fail, and even the folk-memory of Leto II cannot rescue them from time But this is not to deny Jehanne her due Nothing can deny her mat She is the equal of Jessica, the mother of Paul Muad'Dib, in her effect on human history, and this comparison brings us to our second and final point Both of these women, for the most intense of personal reasons, defied their order, the Bene Gessent To please her Duke, out of her love fctf him, Jessica bore a son rather than the daughter that had been enjoined Out of her gnef for her dead daughter, Jehanne embarked upon a rebellion which she pro posed to lead This violated one of the most ancient of Bene Gessent proscriptions, that against the public involvement of their mem bers as social leaders of any sort The dangers of exposure of the order under these circumstances were manifest, yet Jehanne persisted After Richese, with the launching of a Jihad, the exposure of the order became a virtual certainty but by then all the priestesses of Komos were involved also Twice m the history of the order, then, the severest strictures of the Bene Gessent have been violated by one of their own Sisterhood, acting in response to intense personal motivation It would seem that even the most compelling program of education and mottva tion ever devised, that of the Bene Gessent, is not enough to completely extinguish the independence of mankind Our history has taught us to be thankful for this FM Further references BUTLERIAN JIHAD LorsKarden The Flame and the Flower A Short History of the Butlenan Jihad (Yorba Rose) Th Breno Patrick The Kubeban Heresy Vol 52 Patrologia Dwporae (Libermann Miller) Harq al Ada The Butlenan Jihad (Work in Progress Aitatos Studies Temporary Series 283 Lib Conf) BOTLERIAN JIHAD ("THE GREAT REVOLT) ITS CAC1SE AND EFFECT.