"Nothing is true; everything is permitted" - I find this phrase, popularized by the game Assassins' Creed, quite confusing even as historic fiction.
Historically, the Hassansins (a.k.a the Assassins) were devout Nizari Ismailis. From the little I know about their religion, like other Abrahamic faiths, it too obliges its followers to believe in divine judgement after death (concepts of hell and heaven) and clearly decrees what is/isn't permitted. How can a religious missionary like Hassan-i-Sabbah (leader of the Assassins) choose a motto that goes against the very religion he preached? What am I missing here?
Previously, this phrase appeared in the 1938 novel "Alamut" by Vladimir Bartol, who associated it to the Assassins order. Before that Friedrich Nietzsche (father of the existentialism philosophy) wrote the phrase in his 1859 book "The Geneology of Morals." He too attributed the phrase’s origin to Hassan-i-Sabbah.