Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

[Johnny_L.A]

Who said it?

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

According to legend, it was this guy.

[Cicero]

It sounds like a bastardisation of Dostoyevsky.

[BMax]

My first thought was Aleister Crowley, but his eact words were “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”

[Cicero]

I was thinking of the line:

“If God does not exist, then everything is permitted”

[aldiboronti]

@BMax

My first thought was Aleister Crowley, but his eact words were “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”

Crowley took that quote from Rabelais. It’s the inscription above the door of the Abbey of Theleme in Gargantua and Pantagruel.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

The line is attributed (perhaps apocryphally) as the last words of Hassan ibn Sabbah, aka “The Old Man of the Mountain,” the legendary founder of a guerilla group called the hashashins (supposedly the origin of the word “assassin,” so-called because they allegely used hashish before they went into battle).

William Burroughs used the quote a lot in Naked Lunch.

[Johanna]

Robert Anton Wilson also helped to spread the idea that Hasan-i Sabbah (d. 1124) said that. I remember reading that in the Illuminatus! trilogy.

Historical fact is less romantic. Hasan-i Sabbah was a strict observant of the Isma‘ili sect of Islam and enforced religious law among his followers, the Nizari Isma‘ilis (nicknamed the Assassins).

The antinomian doctrine was actually the work of another Hasan who became the Nizari leader a few generations later. He proclaimed that the Day of Judgment (Qiyamah) had already arrived, so there would be no more religious law. He made this proclamation in 1164 while breaking the fast of Ramadan at high noon by drinking wine. In Islamic law, you have to fast until sunset in Ramadan, and wine is forbidden. However, the antinomian Hasan was later followed by Hasan III, who reimposed Islamic law on the Nizaris.

The confusion must have resulted because the proclaimer of Qiyamah was also named Hasan, and through retellings, like in the game of Telephone, the less famous one was forgotten and his sins attributed to his pious forebear, the famous Hasan. The second Hasan was, ironically, assassinated in 1166.

Cite: New Encyclopedia of Islam by Cyril Glassé, p. 226.

[Johnny_L.A]

@Diogenes the Cynic

William Burroughs used the quote a lot in Naked Lunch.

That’s where I saw it!

[capybara]

@Johanna

Robert Anton Wilson also helped to spread the idea that Hasan-i Sabbah (d. 1124) said that. I remember reading that in the Illuminatus! trilogy.

Historical fact is less romantic. Hasan-i Sabbah was a strict observant of the Isma‘ili sect of Islam and enforced religious law among his followers, the Nizari Isma‘ilis (nicknamed the Assassins).

The antinomian doctrine was actually the work of another Hasan who became the Nizari leader a few generations later. He proclaimed that the Day of Judgment (Qiyamah) had already arrived, so there would be no more religious law. He made this proclamation in 1164 while breaking the fast of Ramadan at high noon by drinking wine. In Islamic law, you have to fast until sunset in Ramadan, and wine is forbidden. However, the antinomian Hasan was later followed by Hasan III, who reimposed Islamic law on the Nizaris.

The confusion must have resulted because the proclaimer of Qiyamah was also named Hasan, and through retellings, like in the game of Telephone, the less famous one was forgotten and his sins attributed to his pious forebear, the famous Hasan. The second Hasan was, ironically, assassinated in 1166.

Cite: New Encyclopedia of Islam by Cyril Glassé, p. 226.

Yay! Information! I love disambiguation and popping of overly convenient and sexy historical factoids. Good Johanna.

[xiix]

fnord.

hail eris.

that is all.