It became a common thought of mine, while speaking to these individuals, that being blind could make life more tolerable than seeing what they saw every day, what stalked them at every turn. I felt ashamed for having that thought, but learning about the depths Islamophobia has sunk to in China and the heights of violence it has risen to in India revealed dangers so existential, and conjured up fears so extreme, that I have no choice but to level the harshest possible indictment at the American War on Terror. It is a war far more gruesome than war as we know it, more ominous than dystopian novelists could imagine, one that has spiraled into crusades of mass internment and ethnic cleansing in parts of the world seen and unseen.

SEED: Could frame an essay contrasting real-world state violence against speculative dystopian narratives to argue fiction underestimates reality.

Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamopho…, loc. 156