The idea in one minute
This page looks at the Narnia stories by C.S. Lewis. It explains that Lewis said Aslan the lion was his answer to a question: what if God came to another world? You will learn the Christian answer in its own words, how Muslims and Jews might see Aslan, and a hard question about the land of Calormen.
The question: If God came to a world of talking animals, what might He be like? And how do readers of different faiths, and of none, meet that picture?
A girl pushes through the fur coats at the back of a wardrobe. Under her feet is snow, and ahead a lamp-post burns in a wood. Since 1950, millions of children have followed Lucy into Narnia. In February 2027 a new film by Greta Gerwig, Narnia: The Magician's Nephew, will take a new generation back to the very beginning, when the great lion Aslan sings a world into being.
Many readers never notice that Narnia is about God. Many others notice nothing else. C.S. Lewis, who wrote the books, said both groups had missed something. Aslan, he wrote, was not a code. He was an answer to a question.
In the makers' own words
“This is not allegory at all.”
C.S. Lewis, letter to Mrs Hook, December 1958 · Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, vol. 3 (quoted in Wikipedia, 'Religion in The Chronicles of Narnia')
“an imaginary answer to the question, 'What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia...'”
C.S. Lewis, same letter, December 1958 · Collected Letters, vol. 3 (via Wikipedia)
“It all began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion.”
C.S. Lewis, 1960 · 'It All Began with a Picture' (via Wikipedia)
“I cannot wait for people to see the film in theatres on February 12 and on Netflix on April 2.”
Greta Gerwig, to Netflix Tudum, 1 May 2026 · Variety (Australia), 'Greta Gerwig's Narnia moves to 2027'
A 'supposal', not a code
Lewis knew a great deal about allegory; he wrote an academic book about it. In an allegory, each character stands for an idea, like Giant Despair in The Pilgrim's Progress. Lewis said Aslan was different. In a letter of December 1958 he explained that Aslan was 'an imaginary answer to the question, What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia', and if He chose to become incarnate, die and rise again there. 'This is not allegory at all,' he wrote; scholars call it his 'supposal'.
Lewis also said the books did not start with a lesson. 'It all began with images,' he wrote: a faun with an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion. Only later did the Christian meaning, in his words, push itself in. In a letter in 1961 he explained why he chose a lion: it is the king of beasts, and in the Bible Christ is called 'the Lion who is of the tribe of Judah' (Revelation 5:5).
The Christian story inside the wardrobe
For Christians, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe tells the heart of their faith in a new key. Edmund betrays his brother and sisters for sweets and a promise of power. By the old law of Narnia his life now belongs to the White Witch. Aslan offers his own life instead, is killed on the Stone Table, and comes back to life at dawn, because of a 'deeper magic' the Witch did not know.
Christians will recognise the pattern at once. Jesus said that he came 'to give his life as a ransom for many' (Mark 10:45), and Christians believe he died for the sins of the world and rose on the third day. The Magician's Nephew, the story Gerwig is filming, tells how Aslan sings Narnia into being out of darkness, echoing Genesis and the opening of John's Gospel: 'All things were made through him' (John 1:3).
How a Muslim reader might meet Aslan
Muslims love and honour Jesus, and it is worth being fair to both faiths here. The Qur'an calls him the Messiah, 'a word from God' given to Mary (peace be upon her) (3:45), born without a father as 'He said: So (it will be). Thy Lord saith: It is easy for Me. And (it will be) that We may make of him a revelation for mankind and a mercy from Us, and it is a thing ordained.' (19:21, Pickthall). He healed the sick and raised the dead 'I fashion for you out of clay the likeness of a bird, and I breathe into it and it is a bird, by Allah's leave.' (3:49, Pickthall), and Muslims await his return. A Muslim reader can recognise much of Aslan's mercy and gentleness.
But the centre of Lewis's story is exactly where Islam and Christianity part. Lewis's Aslan is God come into his world. In Islam, Jesus is a great prophet and servant of God, not God: 'I am the servant of God,' he says in the Qur'an (19:30). And the mainstream Muslim reading of the Qur'an (4:157–158) is that Jesus was not killed on a cross but raised by God to Himself. So a Muslim can enjoy Narnia as a beautiful story by a Christian about how he imagines God's love, while holding a different belief about who Jesus is. That is the spirit of this site: each faith in its own words, no pretending the differences away.
The Calormen question
There is a harder part. To the south of Narnia lies Calormen, a desert empire whose people wear turbans and pointed shoes, carry scimitars, pay in coins called 'crescents' and serve a cruel vulture-headed god called Tash. Many readers, including many Muslims, have felt that this is a picture of Arabs and Muslims drawn by someone looking down on them. The novelist Philip Pullman calls the books 'blatantly racist'. The Catholic writer Paul F. Ford, in his Companion to Narnia, says Lewis was 'a man of his time' who was 'unconsciously but regrettably unsympathetic' to other cultures, and believes Lewis would want to reconsider it today.
It is also fair to note what complicates the picture. Calormen worships many gods and makes images of them, which is the opposite of Islam's strict oneness. And two of Lewis's most admirable characters are Calormene: Aravis, the brave heroine of The Horse and His Boy, and Emeth, a young soldier in The Last Battle. Emeth has served Tash sincerely all his life. When he meets Aslan, Aslan tells him that every good thing he did in Tash's name was really done for Aslan, and every cruel thing done in Aslan's name was really done for Tash. 'Emeth' is the Hebrew word for truth.
Readers disagree about whether Emeth makes up for Calormen. Some find his story generous; others find it patronising, because the good Calormene turns out to have been serving the Narnian god all along. We do not need to settle that. We can say plainly that the portrait of Calormen has hurt people, that Lewis also wrote a striking scene of a sincere outsider being welcomed, and that a new film is a good moment to talk about both.
The Names this touches
The contrast
The books imagine God coming into a world of talking beasts as a lion who dies and rises; the Names describe the One who needs no form in any world, whom no creature resembles, and whose mercy and truth reach every sincere heart in every land.
Ar-Raḥmān: The Entirely Merciful, whose mercy reaches every creature, in every land.
Al-Ḥaqq: The Truth: Emeth's name means truth, and God knows every sincere heart.
Al-Badīʿ: The Originator without precedent: Narnia is sung into being; the heavens and earth needed only 'Be'.
What each faith says
Judaism
“Judah is a lion's whelp; from the prey, my son, thou art gone up. He stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as a lioness; who shall rouse him up?”
Genesis 49:9 · JPS 1917
The lion as a royal symbol begins in the Hebrew Bible: 'Judah is a lion's whelp' (Genesis 49:9), and the lion of Judah became an emblem of the Jewish people and their kings. Lions of Judah still guard the Torah: they are embroidered on the curtains of synagogue arks and carved above them, standing either side of the tablets of the law. In Judaism the Messiah, when he comes, will be a human king and teacher from Judah’s line.
The Emeth scene has a Jewish echo of its own. The rabbis taught that 'the righteous of the nations have a share in the world to come' (Tosefta Sanhedrin 13:2), and Maimonides wrote it into Jewish law: a non-Jew who keeps the basic moral laws given to all humanity is counted among the righteous. Judaism has always held that God judges people of every nation by their deeds.
Christianity
“Behold, the Lion who is of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome.”
Revelation 5:5 · WEB
For Christians, Narnia is a way of seeing the Gospel afresh, without 'stained-glass and Sunday school' associations, as Lewis once put it. Aslan's sacrifice and return are the Easter story; his singing of the world is creation through the Word (John 1:1–3); his warning in The Last Battle against a false Aslan, a donkey dressed in a lion skin, echoes Jesus' warning against false messiahs (Matthew 24:24).
The Emeth scene is close to a parable of Jesus in which the righteous ask, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry, and feed you?', and are told that what they did for the least of people they did for him (Matthew 25:37–40).
Islam
“(And remember) when the angels said: O Mary! Lo! Allah giveth thee glad tidings of a word from him, whose name is the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, illustrious in the world and the Hereafter, and one of those brought near (unto Allah).”
Qur'an 3:45 · Pickthall (1930)
Islam honours Jesus as one of the greatest prophets, born of Mary (peace be upon her), the only woman the Qur'an mentions by name, whom it calls chosen 'And when the angels said: O Mary! Lo! Allah hath chosen thee and made thee pure, and hath preferred thee above (all) the women of creation.' (3:42, Pickthall). Muslims believe in him, love him and await his return. They do not believe he is divine, and the Qur'an has him say on the Day of Judgement that he never asked anyone to worship him (5:116).
On people of other faiths, the Qur'an says that 'Lo! Those who believe (in that which is revealed unto thee, Muhammad), and those who are Jews, and Christians, and Sabaeans - whoever believeth in Allah and the Last Day and doeth right - surely their reward is with their Lord, and there shall no fear come upon them neither shall they grieve.' (2:62, Pickthall). Scholars have long discussed how to read that verse alongside others, and this site does not settle it. What is clear is that God judges hearts: the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ (peace be upon him) taught that God looks at hearts and deeds, not appearances (Muslim 2564).
Same and different
All three faiths honour the image of the lion of Judah and believe God judges people by their hearts and deeds. Christians later read the lion of Judah as a title of Christ; Jews do not. They genuinely differ on who Jesus is. For Jews he is not the Messiah, whose coming is still awaited. For Muslims he is the Messiah and a beloved prophet, not divine, raised to God rather than crucified. For Christians he is God the Son who died and rose for the world, which Lewis’s Aslan pictures.
Go deeper
- Religion in The Chronicles of Narnia (encyclopaedia overview, with Lewis's letters) · article
- Calormen and the debate over Lewis's portrayal (encyclopaedia overview) · article
- Qur'an 19:16–36, the story of Mary and Jesus · scripture
- Matthew 25:31–46 (World English Bible) · scripture
- Netflix Tudum: Narnia: The Magician's Nephew · official
- Genesis 49, “Judah is a lion’s whelp” (Sefaria) · scripture
Sources (7)
- Lewis's 1958 letter to Mrs Hook; 1961 letter on the lion; 'It all began with images': Wikipedia, 'Religion in The Chronicles of Narnia' (citing Collected Letters)
- Calormen details; Pullman 'blatantly racist'; Paul F. Ford quotes; Baynes's Tash resembling Garuda; Aravis and Emeth: Wikipedia, 'Calormen'
- Emeth accepted by Aslan: Wikipedia, 'The Last Battle'
- Magician's Nephew: IMAX previews 10 February 2027, wide release 12 February, Netflix 2 April; Meryl Streep as Aslan: Wikipedia, 'Narnia: The Magician's Nephew'; Variety, 1 May 2026
- BBFC: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) PG; Prince Caspian PG: BBFC
- 'The righteous of the nations have a share in the world to come': Tosefta Sanhedrin 13:2; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Kings 8:11
- God looks at hearts and deeds: Sahih Muslim 2564
