XPost: alt.books.cs-lewis   
   From: hayesmstw@hotmail.com   
      
   [ Originally posted in response to a discussion in another forum. ]   
      
   I am certain that Lewis was not intending to portray the Calormenes as   
   Islamic. There is virtually nothing in common between their religion and   
   Islam. Aren't there statues of Tash mentioned in "The horse and his boy"?   
   Nothing could be further from Islam.   
      
   One should also be wary of speaking of "Judaeo-Christian". Many Jews find the   
   term highly offensive. Some scholars of religion refer to Judaism,   
   Christianity and Islam as "Abrahamic" to point to what they have in common,   
   and of course all three arose in the Near East. In many ways it would be more   
   accurate to speak of Judaeo-Islamic, because Judaism and Islam are closer to   
   one another than either is to Christianity, at least in their theology.   
      
   One should also be wary of characterising C.S. Lewis as "racist". Out of the   
   silent planet is a very anti-racist novel, where Lewis portrays the unity of   
   three species, who are far more different from each other than human races,   
   not just in culture, but in physical appearance. Weston represents the   
   racist-imperialists of the New Imperialism that swept Western Europe between   
   1870 and 1915 (when Lewis was growing up), and the Oyarsa's questioning of it   
   is a quite devastating criticism of racist-imperialism from a Christian point   
   of view -- even though it was the dominant ideology of the time and place in   
   which Lewis spent his youth.   
      
   The Calormenes are, of course, reminiscent of an orental despotism, partly   
   drawn from pictures in the Arabian Nights, and partly from ancient   
   pre-Christian empires such as Babylon, Syria and Egypt. But they are an   
   amalgam of many different elements, just as the land of Narnia itself is.   
   Beavers with sewing machines? Perhaps Narnia was in the Canadian outback, and   
   the Calormenes were Aztecs with their cruel religion! Though the Spanish who   
   conquered the Aztecs were equally cruel.   
      
   Narnia is a fantasy world, though its inhabitants have many of the virtues and   
   vices of people in our world; if they did not, their stories would have no   
   appeal to us.   
      
   --   
   Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa   
   http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm   
   E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)