The Codex 4: The Irony of our Order

What follows are the three great ironies of the Assassin Order: (1) Here we seek to promote peace, but murder is our means. (2) Here we seek to open the minds of men, but require obedience to a master and set of rules. (3) Here we seek to reveal the danger of blind faith, yet we are practitioners ourselves.

I have no satisfactory answer to these charges, only possibilities... Do we bend the rules in service to a greater good? And if we do, what does it say of us? That we are liars? That we are frauds? That we are weak? Every moment is spent wrestling with these contradictions and in spite of all the years I've had to reflect, still I can find no suitable answer... And I fear that one may not exist.

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. Does our creed provide the answer, then? That one may be two things – opposite in every way – simultaneously? And why not? Am I not proof? We of noble intentions, possessed of barbaric means? We who celebrate the sanctity of life and then promptly take it from those we deem our enemies?

Commentary: Here we see Altair's doubts regarding his Order. Eventually, he comes to the conclusion that his creed allows for one to be contradictory without being hypocritical. I do not imagine the Templars would see it the same way. And why not? Everything is permitted, after all. The creed forces one to think, to not depend on pre-packaged ideas. At the same time as allowing action beyond society's rules by saying everything is permitted, it tempers it by saying nothing is true. Far from being a creed that promotes freedom, it is a creed that promotes even mindedness and sensibility.