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.     

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