{"id":57716,"date":"2025-11-24T15:47:54","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T20:47:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/?p=57716"},"modified":"2025-11-28T01:18:04","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T06:18:04","slug":"photon-torpedoes-break-the-space-muqarnas-sff-audiovisuals-and-anti-muslim-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/non-fiction\/photon-torpedoes-break-the-space-muqarnas-sff-audiovisuals-and-anti-muslim-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Photon Torpedoes Break the Space Muqarnas: SFF Audiovisuals and Anti-Muslim Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lately I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about Game of Thrones<\/em>.<\/p>\n

There is a battle in the seventh season of the series (2017) in which exiled Queen Daenerys leads her army onto the green and pleasant land of Westeros (the show and the books\u2019 cipher for medieval England). That battle shows us Daenerys immolating her not-English foes from dragonback, while her not-Mongol followers casually pick off survivors. At the heart of the slaughter lies a poignant scene.<\/p>\n

We watch blinkered white horses pull a flaming cart through the battlefield, while burning soldiers wrench helms off their melting faces, desperate to douse themselves in water under roiling clouds of smoke. We share this perspective with the not-English commander of the ruined army, Jaime Lannister. We watch horrors unfold to the moving score of Ramin Djawadi\u2014a molasses-drip cello solo, tinted by snarls and screams.<\/p>\n

It is a genuinely moving piece of storytelling. From acting to camera work to scoring, we as viewers are cornered into one conclusion. If war is hell, air power is that hell most completely unveiled. The meaning of victory and defeat crumples before the shock of overwhelming, overpowering violence.<\/p>\n

If only that were it.<\/p>\n

Six episodes back (2016), we find Queen Daenerys still exiled among the desert cities and steppes of Essos (the show\u2019s cipher for the Middle East and Central Asia). Here, we are also offered the sight of Daenerys immolating foes from dragonback\u2014only for this round, the foemen are not-Muslims. Our perspective is mostly shared with Daenerys herself, gazing from on high at smoldering pyramids and discombobulated soldiers. We get a close shot of her looking down on the latter before she pronounces, like a judge or maybe a messiah, the order to burn<\/em>. All this happens to the tune of Djawadi\u2019s music\u2014but here, we are given rousing string sections, the stirring beat of drums and horns. The accompaniments we begin with are draconic wingbeats and roars, the human cries coming later.<\/p>\n

Read together, the scenes do what they cannot do apart. Dragonfire against the humans of Westeros is an unbearable tragedy that bruises the heart. Dragonfire against the humans of Essos, on the other hand, is not only to be celebrated, but taken as good policy. In the words of Daenerys\u2019s vizier, Tyrion, to one of the survivors of the burnings in Essos:<\/p>\n

Tell your people what happened here. Tell them you live by the grace of Her Majesty. When they come forward with notions of retribution or ideas about returning the slave cities to their former glory, remind them what happened when Daenerys Stormborn and her dragons came to Meereen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Language matters, as does sound, especially as we watch our stories unfold on the screen. To be a not-Muslim in a fantasy show is to be exiled from dreams of retribution (read: justice) or glory (read: autonomy). To be a not-Muslim is to dwell forever in the shadow of dragon-riding foreigners (read: armed occupiers) who will maybe offer you grace (read: leaving a few alive after killing their fill). It is to have your attacks on Queen Daenerys accompanied by sinister musical cues\u2014the hisses and whispers that generally precede the Sons of the Harpy\u2014while Jaime Lannister\u2019s bold charge on horseback against her earns a lovely full-throated chorus.<\/p>\n

I am dragging a comb through these scenes because the race work done by fantasy and science fiction occurs on the granular level. It lies not only in the stories\u2019 content but in camera angles, in musical cues, in who gets to speak, in who has the last word. Game of Thrones<\/em> is a sort of paradigmatic example due to its popularity and endurance (consider that the franchise is still running and its newest branch has recently been announced). It is also far from the only case.<\/p>\n

I mentioned that I\u2019ve been thinking about Game of Thrones <\/em>lately, and such scenes in particular. This is hardly the first time, to be sure, but the show has been returning to me throughout the past two years of genocide in Gaza. I think it\u2019s something about the body. The same eyes that watch Daenerys and her dragons watch Israeli bombs double-tap journalists at a hospital. The same ears that hear Djawadi\u2019s brilliant score hear the voice of the child Hind Rajab. The same neural nodes process Tyrion\u2019s chastisement alongside the Israeli minister Smotrich saying of Palestinians that there is \u201cnothing and no one to recognize.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our bodies\u2014or rather, the bodies of those of us, in the words of Omar El Akkad, \u201con the launching side of the missiles<\/a>\u201d\u2014have always been filtering real and imaginative violence at the same time. Israel\u2019s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza is, however, distinct: in terms of the scale of industrial violence, in terms of the constant documentation (despite the canard of no journalists in Gaza<\/em>), and in terms of the besieging silences.<\/p>\n

Faced with scale and silence, we need a cosmography of Anglophone SFF that captures the codes by which orientalism is animated today. That cosmography would be part of the greater archive exploring SFF as colonial fantasy of the twentieth century, an epoch in which European empires were simultaneously being shaken from earthly holdings and dreaming of stretching into \u201cempty\u201d space.[1]<\/a> Here we will pay attention to the extension of that fantasy into our present, its projections into the future, specifically with reference to imagining Muslim death. As we walk through such projections, it is crucial we know them not for an ideology (Islamophobia) but an imperial structure (anti-Muslim racism). We need to limn the threads between fantasy violence and genocidal realities. We need to map the bleed between what we accept in imaginary worlds and what we accept around us. We need cosmography not as analysis, but as action.<\/p>\n

This is not a postmortem. Firstly, there is no condition of \u201cpost.\u201d The violence continues against Palestinians, as it does against Afghans who suffer bombings and ethnic cleansing from their neighbors, as it does against Uyghurs imprisoned in Chinese concentration camps, as it does against Rohingya living in limbo in the world\u2019s largest refugee camp.<\/p>\n

Secondly, opposition to genocide will not be backdated, and support for it will not be effaced. There must be an accounting, across arenas\u2014ours being the market in Anglophone SFF. An exhaustive accounting is beyond any single one of us, but not beyond the mass of us.<\/p>\n

Fuck you, Tyrion\u2014we\u2019ll keep our notions of justice, and there\u2019s no grace from dragon fire.<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Game of Thrones<\/em> is taken to have changed fantasy on our screens. On the production level, its success certainly factored into companies\u2019 calculations about the genre\u2019s moneymaking potential. But we are here to think about the effect on the creative side, too. Game of Thrones<\/em> built an enduring visual vocabulary, and it is this embodied lexicon that extends its orientalism past the franchise.<\/p>\n

Consider the Sons of the Harpy.<\/p>\n

The Sons of the Harpy are not-Muslim slavers fighting Queen Daenerys after her takeover of their city in Essos (2015). The central idea is that the hapless folk of Essos never considered abolishing slavery until the alarmingly white Daenerys showed up with the thought. This teleology lines up neatly with Euro-American narratives, which emphasize the role of white Christians in theorizing the end of slavery, despite being preceded<\/a> by Islamic abolitionist theory and practice alike as well as parallel\u00a0patterns<\/a> of African abolitionist thought.\u00a0Out of this civilizing mission emerge the Sons of the Harpy, fighting to restore the old ways, taking up the mythic-religious symbol of the Harpy to do so.<\/p>\n

The Sons of the Harpy are also cowards. They will attack you from behind. They will attack you from the dark. They will attack you at your favorite sporting events. They will attack you when you are innocently visiting a local sex worker to relax from your day-job as occupying soldier. They will do so wearing flowing robes, bunched turbans, and copper masks similar to those forged in ancient Sumer and Akkad.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

Jump forward with me about seven years, to a different fantasy world. In the opening minutes of The Witcher: Blood Origin<\/em> (2022), we find ourselves in the elven kingdom of Xin\u2019trea, being told by unseen voices that the noble elf king would go touring in \u201cthe lowborn streets despite the threat of assassins from other kingdoms.\u201d At once we cut to a scene of those assassins attacking the king\u2019s retinue. It is the first time we are meeting any of these characters.<\/p>\n

The king looks like a medieval knight in his circlet, breastplate, and vambraces. His bodyguard, Fjall, accompanies him in a sleeveless cuirass and breeches, hefting a giant axe. The princess Merwyn can be found in a conservative ecru gown. The nameless assassins, on the other hand, spring at the entourage wearing loose robes and veiling turbans. Despite the trickery of tiny bombs and burning carts, they are handily dispatched. Their chief narrative purpose is to lubricate the subsequent romantic interlude between Fjall and Merwyn.<\/p>\n

Taken separately, these factors might seem cringey. The real work, though, is done in the contrast. We are being treated to a visual dialectic, a conversation without words. We are primed to understand who is a villainous assassin and who is a worthy hero through clashing wardrobes. This is only possible because we presume audience participation\u2014that the audience will already recognize that the turbans and flowing robes signify the enemy.<\/p>\n

But Blood Origin<\/em> does not merely lean on past presumptions, it carries them forward. We are soon given another scene, in which the warrior-musician Lark is joined by Fjall in fighting off even more not-Muslim assassins. These killers are not only turbaned but clad in metal masks that once again reference ancient Mesopotamia. Unlike their masked brethren in the Sons of the Harpy, these assassins are protected by coats of scale armor, a design also originating out of the historical Middle East. Like the Sons of the Harpy, they are cowards. The last one is killed while fleeing by an axe to the back.<\/p>\n

Moving beyond garb, Blood Origin<\/em> and Game of Thrones<\/em> share a theory of damage. Not-Muslim assassins wield short knives which prove largely useless against named characters. The male heroes who dispatch them are endowed with more impressive tools (Grey Worm\u2019s lengthy spear, Barristan Selmy\u2019s long sword, Fjall\u2019s thick axe). Even when the Sons of the Harpy bring down Barristan Selmy (by surprise and sheer numbers) the assassins fail to finish the coup de gr\u00e2ce. Not-Muslim assassination violence is a perennial and ubiquitous threat\u2014and also, basically impotent against men with sizable-enough blades.<\/p>\n

Or sizable-enough dragons. In the Game of Thrones<\/em> prequel House of the Dragon<\/em> (2022), Queen Daenerys\u2019s ancestor Daemon is faced with the problem of the Crab People. These enemies are not military superiors, yet are still difficult to defeat, since they retreat into caves into which the Targaryen air force cannot follow. The problem echoes US military concerns about Taliban caves during the occupation of Afghanistan, the perhaps most famous example being the hunt for Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora. Daemon resolves the problem by offering himself up as bait, thereby luring the entire Crab People army out of their caves, whereupon we see them clad in\u2014you\u2019ve guessed it\u2014turbans and robes.<\/p>\n

Obviously, the dragons tarry only long enough for Daemon to singlehandedly slice and dice one or two dozen Crab People on his own. Once they appear in the sky and pour fire on the Crab People\u2019s heads, it is to yet another spirited orchestral piece (and, somehow, a dragon rider going \u201cWoo!\u201d). Whoever mourns for the Crab People, viewer, it\u2019s certainly not meant to be you.<\/p>\n

Everything here\u2014how people dress, how people fight, how people (fail to) fuck\u2014is the making of race. The flowing robes and metal masks and stubby little knives are highly compressed data packets. They confirm our past associations and ready us for future ones. They do so while obviating the need for not-Muslim subjectivity or interiority. They show, don\u2019t tell.<\/p>\n

The narrative trick of \u201csaving the cat\u201d refers to an otherwise bland or unlikeable protagonist doing something noble (proverbially, saving a cat) early on within the narrative, thus establishing their moral bona fides. For these plotlines in Game of Thrones<\/em> and Blood Origin<\/em>, it\u2019s the same maneuver, except no cats are saved\u2014in lieu of cats, we can earn the same moral credit through spilling not-Muslim blood.<\/p>\n

2.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But orientalism is not a matter of image alone. If the orientalism of Game of Thrones<\/em> and The Witcher<\/em> relies upon coded images, that of Star Trek: Discovery<\/em> knots orientalist ideas even more tightly into its narrative structure.<\/p>\n

Discovery<\/em> opens (2017) with the speech of T\u2019kuvma, a messiah among the spacefaring race of Klingons\u2014<\/p>\n

They are coming. Atom by atom, they will coil around us and take all that we are. There is one way to confront this threat. By reuniting the twenty-four warrior houses for our own empire. We have forgotten the Unforgettable, the last to unify our tribes, Kahless. Together, under one creed: \u201cremain Klingon!\u201d This is why we light our beacon this day. To assemble our people. To lock arms against those who fatal greeting is, \u201cWe come in peace.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In seeking to transcend ethnic fractures, T\u2019kuvma presents as an ethnic supremacist, and while ethnic supremacy in and of itself is not an orientalist code, the surrounding details link it to Islam. His notion of unity is steeped in religious terminology. He offers his followers a revanchist creed. His quest revolves around a \u201csacred beacon.\u201d He dubs fallen \u201cbrothers and sisters\u201d to be \u201cmartyrs\u201d slain in a \u201ccrusade.\u201d He dreams of \u201cpurity\u201d in place of the Federation\u2019s racial \u201cmuck where humans, Vulcans, Tellarites, and filthy Andorians mix.\u201d He is given the same moniker as the past messiah and unifier: \u201cthe Unforgettable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moved by these ideas, T\u2019kuvma leads his followers to war with the Federation\u2014that selfsame coalition of \u201chumans, Vulcans, Tellarites, and filthy Andorians\u201d\u2014and promptly gets most of the movement killed. The battle, however, ignites a longer struggle between the Federation and cannier political players among the Klingons. That struggle is only resolved by the Federation\u2019s threat of and active effort to commit genocide.<\/p>\n

Through all this runs the plotline of a Klingon sleeper agent. One of T\u2019kuvma\u2019s followers, Voq, alters himself to appear human and embeds himself among the Federation protagonists, for reasons left vague. He is portrayed by Shahzad Latif, who, by what I am certain is tremendous coincidence, happens to be the one main cast actor of Pakistani descent. The alteration is so complete that Voq actually forgets himself, and the return of his first personality is thwarted through romantic interludes with a Federation officer. Voq claims to have been raped but this is ultimately revealed as a sort of repressed memory of surgical alteration. The discovery of Voq\u2019s \u201ctrue\u201d nature prompts an instinctive killing response. The issue can only be resolved by the dismembering of Voq\u2019s soul.<\/p>\n

Discovery<\/em>\u2019s arc is built on Western caricatures that sustain the War on Terror and its afterimages. T\u2019kuvma\u2019s religious movement arises out of a context of inter-tribal warring and political disunity (as the Taliban and ISIS are commonly presumed to have done). The movement wields religion as a cultural glue but is swiftly bought out by local political actors, thus forcing a reliance on fifth columns (a la the War on Terror propaganda of 24, Homeland, Sleeper Cell<\/em>, Law & Order, <\/em>etc.).<\/p>\n

Most crucially, only the imminent threat of genocide brings the Klingons to a halt. In this we can hear both past and future echoes of American politicians shrieking about wiping Afghanistan off the map<\/a>, leveling Palestine with nuclear weapons<\/a>, summoning forth an earthly hell in Gaza<\/a>\u2014all while providing material support<\/a> for genocide. If there is one good thing to be said for Discovery<\/em>, it is that unlike in our times, genocide is reconsidered at the last moment.<\/p>\n

Discovery<\/em> doubles down on orientalism in its details. During T\u2019kuvma\u2019s opening speech, a musical track plays under the Klingon dialogue (called \u201cWe Come in Peace\u201d). In an interview<\/a> on the piece, the composer Jeff Russo notes\u2014<\/p>\n

So one of the things we talked about when I first spotted the show with the producers was to start it out feeling whimsical and wondrous, and then to turn toward a darker feeling once we realize what we are looking at, which is the face of this Klingon who is basically saying we want to take over the universe ... It was really a question of what was I going to use to melodically embody the Klingons in this particular cue, and I sort of went back and forth with different solo instruments, woodwinds and stuff, and I landed on duduk, and that really made it sort of happen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The duduk is an Armenian woodwind instrument, the sound of which resonates with woodwinds from across the Greater Middle East. While it has been used in American film and shows before\u2014and often to evoke something of the Middle East\u2014this was the first time the sound was attached to the Klingons. More than that, it is a melodic embodiment<\/em> for the Klingons\u2019 new manifestation as not-Muslims in space\u2014specifically as we transition from Star Trek\u2019s whimsy and wonder<\/em> into a darker feeling<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Then there is the design side. During a summer 2017 reveal<\/a> for Discovery<\/em> in the city of San Diego, concept art for the show\u2019s ships appeared on the display walls. The art included Klingon vessels dubbed the Sarcophagus Ship and the Obelisk Ship, respectively referencing coffins and monuments originating from ancient Egypt. The color tones for these ships are a mix of beige, turquoise, and lapis\u2014a combination evoking the architecture of Afghanistan, Iran, and Central Asia (turquoise and lapis mines are historically associated with the region).<\/p>\n

The creators were aware of all this. In concept art for the Klingon Obelisk ship, the vessel\u2019s design is stated to be: \u201cislamic outer shell - pearlescent interior shell.\u201d The wings of the Sarcophagus ship, meanwhile, boast gold-and-lapis muqarnas\u2014a honeycomb design that springs from medieval Islamic mosque architecture. Once more, the color combination chosen for the Klingon ships evokes in particular the area of Afghanistan, Iran, and Central Asia.<\/p>\n

The design choices\u2014a hodgepodge of ancient and medieval elements from across today\u2019s Muslim world\u2014have to be read in light of comments on the designers\u2019 intentions. The production designer Mark Worthington notes<\/a> that he saw the Klingons as having once been stand-ins for the Russians, a theory often echoed in comments on earlier incarnations of the Klingons. But something novel is taking place. According to Worthington, the effort in Discovery<\/em> was to understand \u201cwho [Klingons] really are culturally\u201d\u2014<\/p>\n

The Klingons, rather than moving into the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, retained a medieval political structure ... Many people seem to think that medieval times and the Middle Ages were unsophisticated, but if you look at the cathedrals that\u2019s hardly an unsophisticated design. We have to see a little more complexity if we see them in that light, that they moved on and developed spacefaring technology but retained certain aspects of culture that we might recognize, like a medieval political structure or faith structure. We also said that they didn\u2019t make a division as we did in the Enlightenment where we slice off the rational and the logical from faith and from those ideas. That\u2019s still retained as one idea.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If we simply take the designer at his word, the Klingons fit into a progressivist teleology. They are a splinter of the European Middle Ages displaced in the cosmos. The problem is that this teleology has been held up as universal since colonial times. One of the most persistent features<\/a> of orientalism is gazing into the Muslim present and seeing the medieval past. Muslims simply move more slowly in time than civilized peoples.<\/p>\n

It is hardly an accident that the Klingon \u201ccathedral\u201d is formally labeled a Sarcophagus adorned with Islamic sacred geometry, and done in colors that certainly do not reference medieval Latin Christendom. Rather, it is an argument, and an all too familiar one at that. The Klingons have failed to unfuse reason and logic from faith and \u201cthose ideas.\u201d This is communicated by nodding toward the real world analogues who are likewise seen to have failed\u2014Muslims.<\/p>\n

Thus does Discovery<\/em> collapse past and future to create an eternal present tense, one in which the Klingons of story are brought into intimate contact with the Muslims of the viewers\u2019 history. The show grafts ancient Egypt and medieval Afghanistan and modern ISIS onto the spacefarers of centuries to come. In doing so, it offers a confirmation not of Islamic history, but American prophecy\u2014prophecy that structures the whole of time by the metrics of the \u201cforever war.\u201d<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In bringing about the overthrow of SFF orientalism and anti-Muslim racism, two things need to happen.<\/p>\n

Firstly, we must pay better attention to orientalism and anti-Muslim racism. The point of going through the glimpses above is to highlight pernicious aesthetic elements, give some sense of what to look (and listen) for, and offer context for what it all means within the historical-cultural moment. Then the task is to go out there and do this all the time with everything.<\/p>\n

Secondly, and concurrently, we need accountability. What I\u2019ve written above is not even close to an exhaustive exploration of Game of Thrones<\/em>, The Witcher<\/em>, or Star Trek<\/em>. Beyond them lies a vast ocean of modern orientalist SFF, trafficking as freely in anti-Muslim racism. If we leave the existing production structure intact by allowing past crimes to go gently into that good night, we are risking the integrity of our future.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

The point in making both things happen is pressure. In our present moment, orientalism and anti-Muslim racism are still acceptable within the Anglophone SFF market. This is because the Anglophone SFF market is embedded within our historical circumstance, symbiotically feeding into and off of society.<\/p>\n

Consider Zohran Mamdani\u2019s words<\/a> on the eve of his election as mayor of New York City, after facing yet another round of racist attacks from his opponents\u2014<\/p>\n

To be Muslim in New York is to expect indignity. But indignity does not make us distinct. There are many New Yorkers who face it. It is the tolerance of that indignity that does ... For as long as we have lived, we have known that no matter what anyone says, there are still certain forms of hate acceptable in [New York] today. Islamophobia is not seen as inexcusable. One can incite violence against our mosques and know that condemnation will never come.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Mamdani would go on to note about the United States, \u201cin an era of ever-diminishing bipartisanship, Islamophobia has emerged as one of the few areas of agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n

In every example I\u2019ve cited above, our heroes are a diverse coalition. Game of Thrones<\/em> gives us a white woman at the helm, but her chief allies include Black warriors and helpers, an advisor with dwarfism, and an entire not-Mongol army. House of the Dragon<\/em> similarly presents us with a white man atop a dragon, but his helpers against the Crab People are Black dragon riders. Blood Origin<\/em> offers up a white man, Black woman, and Asian woman taking up arms against not-Muslim foes. Discovery<\/em>\u2019s crew is often celebrated for its diverse patchwork, which include Black and queer members alongside Michelle Yeoh, who also portrayed Blood Origin<\/em>\u2019s aforementioned Asian protagonist.<\/p>\n

These shows, and many others, pitch a supposedly big tent. That tent is expansive, amorphous, accommodates a shifting set of figures. The only element held in common, between fantasies, is that the aesthetics and codes of Islam<\/em> lie beyond its edge.<\/p>\n

This is how Muslims are wound into the existential stuff of Anglophone SFF\u2014by serving as the ultimate field of permitted violence. The argument is that the ancien regime<\/em> of straight white male heroes can indeed be stretched, and thus preserved. The method of preservation is to invite diverse new generations of heroes into an old shared practice of going to war against not-Muslims.<\/p>\n

Mamdani has struck at a truth that equally rings clear in the Anglophone SFF market. Even when our stories do not agree on much, they agree that the War on Terror is the natural state of things. The War on Terror means the existence of terrorists. The terrorists are the ones who can be prosecuted with violence to the point of genocide. Violence against them can be waged not only with swords and phasers, but with dragons and planet-killing bombs.<\/p>\n

I am writing to you from November 2025. From my present, Israel has killed two hundred and forty Palestinians<\/a> in Gaza since the declaration of ceasefire. Children in Gaza are still being killed by unexploded munitions. The official Palestinian death toll from the past two years continues to rise as more bodies are recovered. Today\u2019s count is past 69,000 dead. The true count<\/a> is beyond this.<\/p>\n

The same is the case for the twenty years of the War on Terror, where 940,000 direct deaths<\/a> represent only a part of the true cost of war. That number still rises. In today\u2019s Afghanistan, despite the ostensible end of war, children are still being struck by unexploded munitions<\/a>. In Afghanistan, after years of occupation, the city of Kabul is projected to soon run out of water<\/a>. In Afghanistan, the poison from the Mother of All Bombs<\/a> seeps into the bodies of men, women, and children. The same is happening in Fallujah<\/a>. The same is predicted<\/a> for Gaza.<\/p>\n

All of this is with me as I write to you about the past decade\u2019s showings of Star Trek<\/em> and Game of Thrones<\/em>. It is with me because these fantasies\u2014these well-crafted and well-funded fantasies, these wildly popular fantasies, these fantasies hailed as ushering in a new age of fantasy and science fiction, these fantasies that have turned great profit for those with their hands at the helm\u2014are designed to bring us into communion with the War on Terror\u2019s telos. They operate to, at the very least, open our souls to the idea of waging violence against not-Muslims through airstrikes and massive ordinance\u2014and if we hold back from genocide at the last breath, it is a sign of our righteousness, not our moral failure.<\/p>\n

We might say that the correlation is straightforward, that acceptance of fantasy violence against not-Muslims prepares our souls to accept real violence against Muslims. I might have made the argument, once. But the genocide in Gaza has forced me toward another possibility\u2014that I would be wrong to presume the separation between fantasy violence and historical violence, and the separation between not-Muslims and Muslims.<\/p>\n

The US president proclaims from the pulpit that he has seen photographic evidence of beheaded babies<\/a>. Calendars at hospitals morph<\/a> into evidence of Hamas presence. Journalists, over and over again<\/a>, are terrorists. Photographs of Palestinian children starving are questioned and rejected<\/a>. New prophets look into the futures of murdered children and declare that they would have certainly become terrorists anyways<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The War on Terror has always been a phantasmagoric one. We\u2019ve known this since the beginning, since US officials raved about nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We\u2019ve known it since the US locked Afghans in Guantanamo Bay on quite literally nonsense charges (accusations of supporting US-backed leaders, accusations of being people who were already in Guantanamo, accusations of being people who never existed).[4]<\/a> We\u2019ve known it since it became US jurisprudence to consider as combatants<\/a> every \u201cmilitary-aged male\u201d in Afghanistan and across Pashtun country; to look at children scrounging for fuel <\/a>and see Taliban-aligned hands digging IED pits.<\/p>\n

The presumed nature of the War on Terror\u2019s targets shares far more with the not-Muslims of Game of Thrones<\/em> and Star Trek<\/em> than with substance of real Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, and Yemenis. That the fantasy is functionally insane does not make it any less murderous. It also means that the Sons of the Harpy and the assassins of Xin\u2019trea and the Crab People and the Klingons are not reflective of our reality. They have an active hand in curating it.<\/p>\n

Dragon fire on white bodies is sad. Dragon fire on not-Muslim bodies is cheered on the screen. We ache when the scimitar prows of not-Muslim ships cleave through a white human captain\u2019s ship. But bombs sent by white admirals into not-Muslim countries are the only way to make these barbarians hear reason (and maybe also a chance to prove how nice we are, we of the civilized world). Don\u2019t listen to the not-Muslim\u2019s testimony of pain. He is probably lying.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t listen to me either, for that matter.<\/p>\n

4.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t remember where I was when I first saw most of the scenes above. I think I will never forget the moment I saw the broadcast scene during the Ghorman Massacre, in the second season of Star Wars: Andor <\/em>(2024). I don\u2019t think I can forget struggling to draw breath through that scene, the way my wife\u2019s hand was locked into a claw around my knee.<\/p>\n

As per Andor<\/em>\u2019s showrunners, the resonances between Ghorman and Gaza were accidental (in that the show was filmed before October 2023) and also structural (in that this is how genocide generally works). This hasn\u2019t stopped people from talking about those resonances. In September 2025, Denise Gough, who is one of the stars of Andor<\/em>, had the following<\/a> to say in a discussion about Palestine\u2014<\/p>\n

Actually, if your heart is broken right now, because my heart is smashed in a million bits, that\u2019s a sign that you are a human ... people in power are not doing enough, but we are, those of us with our hearts broken, we are many.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think Denise Gough is right. I also think she has neatly summed up what many others have said about why Andor <\/em>works. In its bones, it is a story about the many\u2014the many broken hearts, the many who simply do not make it, all of whom are ultimately crucial in bringing down a sprawling cosmic empire.<\/p>\n

The worlds sketched by Game of Thrones<\/em> and Star Trek<\/em> are worlds of power. The only options are join or die. Get to the shelter of the king\u2019s palace before the dragon fire comes down. Enlist on the Federation\u2019s starship before the planet-killer bombs are planted in your earth. To hell with being the many, to hell with your broken heart; make sure you\u2019re among the favored few, and make sure you listen to Tyrion, and keep quiet about what happened.<\/p>\n

Andor <\/em>is the other side of things. The show charts rebellion as a constellation of disparate but interlocking parts: captive prisoners, art dealers, partisans, senators, smugglers, and sundry others. In this, the show expands the spirit of its predecessor, the movie Rogue One<\/em> (2016), a story concerned with the effort of \u201cthe many\u201d during acts of rebellion. Andor<\/em> is an argument for the impossibility of rebellion without each and every one of these moving parts. If even one were to fail, we would never watch a young Jedi trust in the Force and punch a single torpedo down the Death Star\u2019s throat. What Star Wars<\/em> presents with heroic clarity, Andor <\/em>reveals as a dizzying fractal array. The pieces of that array do not fit together neatly. There are cross purposes, warring aims, pragmatic allegiances, overwhelming surges of the heart, luck.<\/p>\n

By dwelling among the many, the frontiers drawn between dragons and assassins, between drones and terrorists, begin to break down. There are no such things as Sons of the Harpy or Crab People. Those are general designations, meant to help general violence go down more smoothly. Those are bits of language useful to power. Those are just fantasies.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been trying here to convince you about the depth of the bonds between fantasy and reality. I\u2019ve been trying to convince you that these things aren\u2019t in polite conversation, but are actually constituting each other. But if that is the case, maybe it means that fantasy is a double-edged sword. Maybe it means we might still grasp at the tools of fantasy for the sake of our reality.<\/p>\n

In his acceptance speech<\/a> for the 2025 Le Guin prize, Vajra Chandrasekera offers the following\u2014<\/p>\n

The late capitalist death drive is so perfected that it is not only willing but eager to sacrifice the real present in pursuit of an imaginary future, and the concepts [oligarchs] use to construct that imaginary come from a vocabulary and a grammar built by science fiction. This is a dangerous dynamic, but not a new one. We cannot forget that the originator of modern political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, first wrote the occupation of Palestine as a science fiction novel four decades before the Nakba. The speculative genres are as fertile ground for monstrous imaginations as they are marvelous ones. There is nothing inherently liberatory in the imagination, but it must be made so. It is necessary to pay attention to what is being written, to what we are writing, and to what we are reading.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pay attention<\/em>, Chandrasekera urges. We cultivate that attention, learn how to exercise it, in many ways\u2014including the sort of criticism found in the writings of Chandrasekera<\/a>, Aamer Rahman<\/a>, Ali Karjoo-Ravary<\/a>, Fargo Tbakhi<\/a>, and others. As Chandrasekera says, our task is to keep our collective attention on the narrative market.<\/p>\n

Pay attention. <\/em>There\u2019s a Pashto saying\u2014jang sor sho aw Miri tod sho<\/em> (after the battle cooled down, Miri got very pugnacious). Or, as Omar El Akkad frames our times\u2014one day, everyone will have always been against this<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Pay attention. <\/em>The powers that be are an adaptive gang. They will shift in their particular positions if it will keep a space open for the free exercise of imaginal violence, imaginal violence that is utterly entangled with real harm. They have done so before. Our attention must refuse this at all points. Our attention must call for the reckoning.<\/p>\n

And by means of our attention, we burn the road clear for the story of the many.<\/p>\n

\n

[1]<\/a> I would like to thank Gautam Bhatia for this particular framing.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> The metal masks have made other appearances on the screen, notably in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian<\/em> (2008). The masks are worn by the Telmarines, who appear to be analogues to early modern Iberians in the film. The early modern empires of Spain and Portugal were formed through the ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Jews, who had been living in Iberia for centuries, but Islamic material culture was woven into the new social fabric of empire. Regarding Spanish appropriations of Islamic clothing in particular, see Javier Irigoyen-Garcia, Moors Dressed as Moors: Clothing, Social Distinction and Ethnicity in Early Modern Iberia<\/em> (University of Toronto Press, 2017).<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> For an exploration of this with reference to Frank Herbert\u2019s Dune<\/em>, see Ali Karjoo-Ravary\u2019s exploration of what is at stake when we strip Islam from science fictional words, and the sort of anti-Muslim sanitization in which Hollywood traffics: \u201cIn Dune, Paul Atreides led a jihad, not a crusade<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Anand Gopal, \u201cBlack Holes,\u201d in No Good Men Among the Living<\/em> (Metropolitan Books, 2014).<\/p>\n

\n

Editor:\u00a0Gautam Bhatia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Copy Editors:\u00a0Copy Editing Department<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n
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Dragon fire on white bodies is sad. Dragon fire on not-Muslim bodies is cheered on the screen. We ache when the scimitar prows of not-Muslim ships cleave through a white human captain\u2019s ship. But bombs sent by white admirals into not-Muslim countries are the only way to make these barbarians hear reason (and maybe also a chance to prove how nice we are, we of the civilized world). Don\u2019t listen to the not-Muslim\u2019s testimony of pain. He is probably lying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-non-fiction"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p82q22-f0U","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57716"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57830,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57716\/revisions\/57830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}