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Egil
Lothe, President of Buddhist Federation of
Norway, explores the role of Buddhism in relation to corruption.Mongolia Web News is happy to provide a platform for the discussion but does not necessarily endorse the points discussed.
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On
December 15, 2006 [1]
Thomas Terry, the president of Eagle Channel, an
American Christian TV
channel in Mongolia, wrote an
article titled “Why do Mongolians view corruption as “acceptable”?” based
on his readings of the USAID’s report,
Mongolia:
Trends in Corruption Attitudes.
The basis for the claim implied in the title of his article seems to be
his reference to the following statement in the report: “Respondents
claiming that some corruption is acceptable increased from 14.3 percent to
19.5 percent”. What the one-fifth of the respondents meant by “some
corruption” is not clearly stated. However deplorable a partial acceptance
of corruption by one-fifth of the respondents is, the report actually
suggests that Mongolians generally do not accept corruption, as 80% of
Mongolians, according to the report, did not claim that “some corruption
is acceptable”. Thus Thomas Terry’s allegation that Mongolians view
corruption as acceptable is in fact not corroborated by the report he refers
to. Still this does not stop Thomas Terry from explaining the prevalence of
corruption in Mongolian society as the result of a flaw of character of
the Mongolian people due to the influence of Buddhism and Atheism:
Mongolian
society has primarily been informed by the worldviews of Atheism and
Buddhism; but they don’t seem to be able to affect the kind of character
in society that makes corruption a source of personal shame. If these
worldviews actually had that ability, then one would expect with such a
long history here that corruption’s acceptability would not be on the
rise .
Considering
the deeply insulting nature of these allegations about the Mongolian
people one would assume that Thomas Terry would point to strong empirical
evidence proving a correlation between Buddhism and corruption, as well as
a contrasting correlation between Christianity and freedom from
corruption, as he claims in his article. Although Thomas Terry does not
refer to any such evidence there are in fact international studies
comparing countries as to their level of corruption. A study commonly
referred to is the annual
Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) by
Transparency
International[2]
which in 2007 rated Mongolia as
number 99 among 179 countries studied. This meant that 98 countries were
considered less corrupt than to
mention a few. Mongolia and 80
countries equally or more corrupt that Mongolia. Do we here see a
correlation between the religion of a country and the level of corruption
in that country, and if so is it to the favour of Christianity and the
disfavour of Buddhism? Mongolia, falling more or less in the middle range,
is clearly not a useful example in this connection. But what about other
countries? A first glance at the study may suggest a result that is
negative from the Buddhist point of view: Myanmar, a Buddhist country, is
found on the bottom of the list together with Somalia, a Muslim country.
On the other end of the list one finds Denmark, Finnland and New Zealand,
which are Christian countries (although strongly secular or “atheist”) as
the three least corrupt countries. However, looking at the list in more
detail one finds a more complex picture suggesting that religion may not
after all be the decisive factor. For instance Singapore, where Buddhism
is currently the largest religion, is the fourth least corrupt country in
the world. The fact that Japan is less corrupt that the United States also
suggests that there is in fact no such correlation as claimed by Thomas
Terry. Actually, among the countries that are more corrupt than Mongolia
there are a number of Christian countries such as Argentina, Guatemala,
the Philippines and Russia
For
Buddhists relevant guidelines to the problem of corruption is found in the
teaching of the
Buddha which says that wealth should be gained in accordance with moral
standards : " One should acquire it only by legal
means, not illegally; one should acquire it peacefully, without coercion
or violence; one should acquire it honestly, not by trickery or deceit;
and one should acquire it in ways which do not entail harm and suffering
for others " [3]
Thomas
Terry’s allegations about
Mongolia and Buddhism are therefore without factual foundations . However, it is deeply disturbing
that a person expressing such untrue and deeply denigrating allegations is
the president of an American television channel that has been allowed
to operate in Mongolia for many years. His attacks on Buddhist Mongolians is a
very poor way of responding to the tolerance he has been shown in this
country and should lead to renewed discussions about whether
Mongolian media should be allowed to be controlled by
foreigners.
[3]
See
references from the Buddhist canonical scriptures: Anguttara Nikaya 4:62;
Anguttara Nikaya 5:41; Anguttara Nikaya 8:54.
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I must mention though that Mr.Terry's done a good job bringing up this issue which still causes today more headache. Educating people morally might be not enough to fight corruption; there are also other ways such as fighting through tough laws and improving the economical standards of people. Again, by becoming or being Christian or Buddist you will not be anti-corruption. As for you ,Mr.Lothe, you didn't have to exaggerate things and make an elephant out of a mouse. By the way, Mongol lamas are "famous" for taking "bribes" and honestly do nothing in return to help the poor when some Christian charity organizations do help the poor. I actually don't see any advantages Buddism has brought to Mongolia and its people. You should be more talking about how ,in your opinion, can we make Mongolia less corrupt. If you not interested in doing so, then why don't you just shut the mouth and let others express freely their own mind in this regard.