Islamophobia in the Chronicles, or Lack of It (Spin-off)

[Theo]

[Sven]

A good book which provides an introduction to the history of the English perception of the Middle East is Edward Said's Orientalism. It's a bit dated now, and Said himself has on occasion been the center of some controversy, but it is an enlightening and interesting book. Read it and you can get some idea of where Lewis might have sourced his imagery of the Calormens.

[Genie]

[David]

Yes, Orientalism is a good book, though a somewhat challenging read. Said says that the East represents the "Other" to Westerners and in literature and art comes to be a symbol for everything that is strange, exotic, and different. This was true for the Far East as well as the Middle East, but since Europeans had more contact with the Middle East (and it was closer), they tended to write and paint more about it.

I tend to see Calormen in this light. It is a place of otherness. It is the moral and cultural opposite of Narnia.

Part of the problem in this day and age is that we tend to think of all things in terms of fear. Someone, for example, who does not approve of homosexuality is called "homophobic," someone who fears homosexuality. Fear may have nothing to do with it, it may simply be a question of ethics or even of lack of knowledge, but it is represented as fear.

So anyone who misrepresents Islam or uses it as a negative symbol is suddenly "Islamophobic." If you want to define people in this light, I think Lewis would qualify--but only if you want to insist that certain representations of Islam are based in fear. I think for Lewis this was certainly not the case.

I will have more to say on this, want to go back and look at some passages in The Horse and His Boy and The Abolition of Man. It also seems someone wrote a critical essay on Lewis and Orientalism, will look for it in my files.

dwl

[Theo]

[David]

Well, Theo, I was not blaming you for using it, I think it's just a term we indiscriminately use, and it seems that a hyphenated "phobia" is how we term everything today. So when Lewis uses the Calormens as bad guys and obviously bases his depiction on Islam, he is not necessarily Muslim-bashing or in fear of Islam but just plugging into intellectual habits of his own day. I will agree this was a little misguided--like the depictions of sinister Asians in the old Fu Man Chu moves of the 1930s, or the depictions of Muslims in old movies like The Charge of the Light Brigdade with Errol Flynn. They were bigoted and ill-informed depcitions to be sure.

My point is that Lewis' depiction of this Mulsim-like culture did not arise out of any personal fear or hatred of Muslims but simply out of the habits of discourse that existed in that time.

dwl

[Theo]

[Dooby]

The Calormene religion isn't based on Islam -- after all, the Calormenes are polytheistic! Of course the culture and setting is very Arabian Nights-esque, but that isn't the same thing at all.

[Theo]

[Pete]

[David]

And, of course, we also assume that Islam is monolithic. What's going on in Iraq now shows it that it is not. Like Christianity, it has its sects, cults, divisions, liberals, conservatives, fundamentalists, etc. This shows, I think, what Said pointed out about the image of Islam the West invented--which has very little to do with the reality of it. Lewis would have been influenced more by this image than anything else.

[Theo]

[Marcus_P_Hagen]

[Sheyla]

I strongly agree w/ Theo... Lewis was by far one of the most tolerant persons I have ever read, and tough we do picture Calormens as Far east inhabitants I don't think they depict muslims because their "religion" is very far away from what muslims actually do.

So I just don't see it as he being scared or even thinking about muslims as he wrote that, lets remember he was a well read man to say the least and all kinds of literature influenced his writing...

(this is my first post in a forum ever, so I hope is ok...)

God bless u all!

[Marcus_P_Hagen]