From another netfriend:

However, [The Narnia Chronicles] do promote a Christianity-as-the-right-way mindset in many subtle ways – for example, in the fact that the “bad” nation of Calormen neighbouring Narnia has distinctly Turkish (and therefore Islamic, though I hesitate to make that point in the current political climate) overtones in both dress and culture. I doubt very much that Lewis intended that to be absorbed subconsciously as thoroughly as I think children would absorb it, but it still makes the books problematic for me.

The one redeeming factor, to me, is in The Last Battle, where the young Calormene ends up in “heaven” in spite of having worshipped Tash (the Calormene god) all his life. And when he expresses astonishment and shame to Aslan, Aslan tells him that since his worship was honest, and he believed Tash to be all that was good instead of all that was evil, he was actually worshipping Aslan without realising it. That Tash was evil, Aslan was good, and thus anyone worshipping good was worshipping Aslan, no matter what name s/he used.

Now *that’s* a just god!

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And another:

I don’t think Calormen was “bad” at all – just happened to be ruled by some bad people at that time.

I believe the Calormen Tarkheena (in the ‘horse and his boy’) was pretty “good”. I think Lewis was trying to make Calormen different and strange and, perhaps from the persepective of the main characters, this made it feel ‘bad’ (but certainly not from the omniscient narrator).

(I have a similar issue with people who say that, in the Lord of the Rings, the Orcs represent black people and the Corsairs represent Arabs etc and thus Tolkien thought non-whites were ‘evil’. The most horrific enemies in Lord of the Rings are the 9 Ringwraiths, fallen ‘white’ kings, not to mention the numenoreans in Sauron’s service etc.)

I do think Lewis was unapologetically apologetical and the Narnia series are far closer to allegory than Tolkien (for instance). Nevertheless, just because it is portrayed as different doesn’t mean it is evil – (see above comment about Tarkheena).

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First netfriend responds:

I’m not sure which “time” you mean – the Narnian narrative covers a lot of generations.

I can see that you could take it that way, but I don’t. I think there’s a consistent suggestion that the Calormen nation as a whole was bad because they worshipped the wrong god (Tash; and the description of Tash is pretty damn horrific), notwithstanding the fact that there were occasional good Calormen characters.

I think, like most books, they show evidence of the mindset of their time. That’s all well and good provided they’re read with that in mind, but my concern with bringing them out as mainstream movies now is that children will NOT be shown that historical context, but rather subconsciously absorb them as current Christian thinking rather than that of 50-odd years ago in post-war Britain.

And given the current christio-political climate, I see a grave danger in anything which even subtly portrays either (non-specifically) the different or (specifically) Islamic culture as worshipping the Evil One.

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