I really do love that passage and it says so much more about the nature of what we're reading than a million critiques of villains carrying scimitars. That said--and I'm no Tolkien scholar--I am curious as to what we should make of an essentially in- (or sub-) human enemy in the form of the orcs and goblins. What few glimpses we get of their society are fairly interesting, but I note that they're not the type of folks for which the usual prescription of mercy might be recommended.
Orcs are best understood in the context of Tolkien's broader project to construct his own complete mythological system: they are the real and genuinely terrifying monsters that the goblins of fairy tale and Germanic legend are a sanitised folk memory of.
In that same vein, I've also been reading Chronicles of Narnia of late, and I had actually been hoping to ask you what you thought of Lewis' treatment of Calormen.
A mish-mash of various 'Eastern' empires from pretty much the entirety of human history (not an exaggeration: the general tone is unmistakably Ottoman
1 - something much more common as a cultural reference in English literature of the time than now of course - but there are clear references to the Achaemenid Empire, to Assyria...) all artfully thrown together to provide a contrasting culture to the distinctly European Narnia. As such it is undeniably 'Orientalist', although I will stress that it is very well done Orientalism, as the fictional society that emerges is not exactly like any of those on which it is based, and does have a certain (surprising?) coherence and solidity. But it is fundamentally geared around the idea of Eastern otherness, decadence and capriciousness, even if Lewis placed Calormen to the south of Narnia rather than to its East.
2Recent charges of racism (except to the extent that you can view Orientalism as racism or fueled by it; but this is a complicated area and one that, in this case at least, I feel rather misses the point) and 'Islamophobia' are less credible. Calormen is defined as distinct from Narnia and Arkenland by its culture (and especially its religion, but we'll come to that in a moment) rather than in racial terms, and there's very little sign that Lewis even gave this aspect much thought. He clearly thought of the people of Calormen as being of a darker complexion than those of Narnia, but are they supposed to resemble Turks, Indians, Arabs, Persians or Indians? It doesn't particularly matter, because that is not the point: Lewis was really only interested in ideas.
More interesting is the Cult of Tash, something that an increasing number of critics have seen as an allegory for Islam so vicious as to be actual libel. Were it based on Islam than this would be undeniably the case, but this is a misunderstanding based, and the irony here is a little rich, on an ahistorical and highly problematic conflation of the Middle East and Islam. Because you do not need to look particularly far to find the actual inspiration for Tash, and that is in Assyrian depictions of some of their more sinister looking deities. It is at this point that you realise
exactly what the Cult of Tash is an allegory for: that of Baal and other figures of Canaanite and Mesopotamian religion. Which, given the Biblical underpinning to the Narnia books, is hardly a surprise.
1. Note the name!
2. Where he, instead, placed God: a reference to the traditional practice of facing churches in Europe towards the compass point symbolically associated with Jerusalem.