I found that the strongest (and most interesting) theme in Dune is the power of faith. The concentrated effort of an entire society is a powerful thing, but difficult to harness. Historically, religion has been an effective tool for mobilizing a population to action (witness the Christian crusades against Islam and more recent calls for jihad against first Soviet and then Western foes), and Dune is in many ways an examination of the staps a machiavellian agent might take to incite such a conflict. The hypothetical situation Frank Herbert posits, the imposition of a designed religion with a hidden agenda onto a society living under harsh conditions, examines the cultural sense that the people of the faith have been chosen by providence as the worthy few on the stage of history. As this similar hubris drove Americans accross the continent (faith does not necessarily have to be placed in a religion), so it drives the Fremen to conspire in hoarding a vast amount of water against the opression of the Harkonnens and to eventually follow their Lisan Al-Gaib, Maud'Dib, to brutal revolution against the off worlders.

What is most interesting, however, is that the entire belief system of the Fremen and their ultimate goals seem to be based off of two main sources: Liet Kynes' vision for a wet, prosperous Dune and the Missionaria Protectiva, the ancient manilpulation of aboriginal religions by the Bene Geresserit as a trump card to be played at the need of one of their sisters. The basic structure of Fremen society, then, is the product of foreign meddling, and with the arrival of Maud'Dib, their leader also is of off world origin (Princess Irulan's assertion that Paul Atreides' place is Dune aside). Now, are the Fremen a manipulated and used people, to be played so thoroghly by strangers? Or, in their assertion of supremacy over their own world and the rest of the empire, a people possessed of far more agency than either the Bene Gesserit or the Atreides/Harkonnen/Corrino houses? After all, it is the Fremen customs that Paul adopts, far more than he imposes his own system upon the Fremen.