Blessed are those who do not look the other way
Malinda SENEVIRATNE
Have
you ever paused to think how much we human beings insult the Ostrich,
ladies and gentlemen? We laugh at the Ostrich so much; we use the
descriptive ‘Ostrich-like’ to humiliate those who close their eyes
(metaphorically of course) and try to convince themselves that things
are ok. We are bad with ‘inconvenient truths’. Sure, every now and then
someone like Al Gore turns up with a documentary by that name, gets a
couple of Academy Award for his trouble and a Nobel Prize to boot.
Whether that’s purchasing of silence or reward, I cannot tell. It is
clear to me however that these blips apart the human species does great
disservice to the noble bird.
Life, I’ve come to realize, can be defined as the relentless search
for convenience. Human beings are comfort-seekers. If there’s something
we can’t stand, we get rid of it or buy it off; and if that’s not
possible we go around it, pretend it does not exist and sometimes even
dress it up so badly that it is unrecognizable. Reality sucks, doesn’t
it? It has a way of wrong-footing us, stripping us naked. Not something
mind of course, as long as no one else sees.
William Bowles in an excellent article titled ‘The nerve of these
guys!’ tells us how the BBC does it. He compares how the BBC reported
the Iranian elections with their coverage of the Afghan one. The BBC
just couldn’t get enough of the protests. Bowles quotes, “Millions of
Iranians simply did not believe the result. The main demand of the
protesters has been an annulment of the result and an election re-run.”
(‘Q&A: Iran election aftermath’, BBC News, 22 June, 2009).
There was no wall-to-wall coverage of Afghan outrage over a stolen
election by the BBC, he notes. Instead they gave us the following:
“There was no further reference to fraud. It was pointed out that the
figures were more or less in line with the opinion polls”. (BBC News, 2
November, 2009).
So, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election was ‘fixed’, according to the
BBC, but in Hamid Karzai’s case, the ‘election’ reflected ‘more or less’
the will of the Afghan voter. Sometimes we see what we want to see and
look the other way when the sight is not that pleasing. And sometimes we
lie through our teeth, don’t we? It’s all about whether its our guy or
whether it is not, isn’t it folks?
But why go as far as Iran or even Afghanistan? Just the other day,
some evangelical group operating as though they were given medical
degrees by the Almighty carried out a faith-healing operation. Two
persons died. This is not the first time that self-appointed (sorry,
God-appointed, they would have us believe) quacks prescribed ‘faith’ and
convinced the credulous that no medicine or medical treatment could cure
their ills. This is not the first time that the ‘faithful’ died of
curable diseases as a result.
In this case, the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) protested, as is their
right. The JHU stormed the ‘church’ of this evangelical group in
Koswatte, broke in and damaged property, quite in violation of the law.
One might add, demonstrating behaviour quite antithetical to what Lord
Buddha advocated.
There is nothing illegal about someone telling someone else not to go
to a doctor. No one is legally bound to seek medical attention if
feeling sick. If such a choice results in death, that’s his/her funeral,
sad to say. There is, however something unethical about it if the
advocate him/herself is happy to spend millions of rupees to get
heart-surgery while at the same time saying ‘have faith, Jesus will take
care of you, Amen!’
There is justification for feeling outraged by such callous twisting
of the notion ‘faith’. One can’t get away with the argument ‘I can’t be
blamed if someone believed the crap I was spouting’. Not illegal, true,
but certainly not right either.
The JHU, with its justifiable political stance of protecting Buddhism
and Buddhists from those who think it’s ‘politics’ to engage in
Buddhist-bashing, smashing Buddha statues (again, no law against someone
buying a Buddha statue and smashing it) and other things that are
insulting of religious sentiment, can call to question these kinds of
quack operations. Indeed, not just the JHU but all decent citizens ought
to take issue with such outfits. However, when the JHU goes overboard,
it is incumbent on all its supporters as well as all Buddhists (in whose
name the JHU speaks, without 100% approval of course) must stand up and
say ‘this is wrong’.
The ‘evangelists’ concerned are clearly sowing the seeds of religious
discord (legally of course), but the answer cannot be seeding other and
perhaps equally or more potent seeds of religious discord. That gets no
one anywhere.
The point is, while Buddhists (or anyone else) can justifiably point
an accusing finger at the ‘evangelists’ (Jesus Never Fails Good News
Centre), they cannot look the other way and pretend that some Buddhist
monks weren’t breaking the law as well as the vinaya rules.
While the JHU has by this act relinquished whatever moral edge they
may have had, so too do Buddhists in general lose the right to take
issue with these evangelical zealots if and when they choose to be
silent when people who style themselves as representatives of Buddhists
engage in vandalism.
By the same token, it is equally disturbing that those who (although
belonging to different denominations) consider Jesus Christ their
saviour are largely silent about the blatant abuse of this saviour’s
name, the Holy Bible and the Holy Cross by organizations that are going
around advocating life-threatening behaviour and insulting the
sensibilities of those of different religious conviction. It smacks of a
political position of the following kind: ‘Well, they are attacking the
heathens; our enemy’s enemy is our friend and therefore let’s look the
other way’.
What’s the difference in this kind of looking-away behaviour and that
other looking-away a few days ago when a mentally ill man was beaten to
death in broad daylight in Bambalapitiya?
We cannot pick and choose when to leave our comfort zone and at the
same time advocate for social change, tolerance, harmony and peace. I am
not saying that all those who object to something should immediately
drop whatever they happen to be doing and put up a poster or organize a
protest march. No.
All I am saying is that ‘doing nothing’ cannot be a legitimate
option, especially not for those who whine that things are bad and
should change, those who offer blue-print for Utopia and draw road-maps
showing how to get there.
If we can’t do all this, then let’s resolve to do one thing, shall we
ladies and gentlemen; let us stop talking and agree to replace the
entire constitution with the law of the jungle, let survival of the
fittest. Civilisation would be a good thing of course, but maybe we just
don’t deserve it.
[email protected].
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