Here it is used as a blanket to throw over all those who do not enjoy the material benefits of progress and civilization. … In a novel full of optical images, the most disabling blind spot is that experienced by Henry Perowne as he gazes from his bedroom window.

XREF: Connects to Ian McEwan's Saturday and its use of optical/blindness imagery.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 118