Monday, January 11, 2016

Buddhism, Islam: Same, Same, But Different!

The previous entry gave me the opportunity to reflect again on our experiences when we lived in Turkey, a country with a 98% Islamic population. The four years we lived there were amazing in so many ways. I often found myself telling stories when we returned home about how kind and honest we found the Turks.

Their honesty was almost unbelievable. One day I answered the door bell to our apartment and a man was standing there holding a duvet wrapped in plastic that he gave to me. I didn’t of course understand his explanation and placed the quilt on the table and he left. When Darlene arrived home an hour later she was astounded. She had been shopping for bedding and had returned home a couple of hours earlier. Her arms had been full of parcels and after she paid for her cab ride she carried her bountiful purchases up to our apartment. Apparently, an hour later the cab driver found the duvet in his trunk, (which Darlene had forgotten about in the commotion) and returned to where he had let her out of the cab. The driver did not know exactly where she lived, but he inquired with the local merchants in the area and they directed him to the foreigner’s apartment. Would this have ever happened in Canada?

A friend of ours lost his wallet in a taxi cab one day and he was in a panic. Of course, he cancelled his credit cards, kissed his money goodbye and kicked himself for his carelessness several times. The next day he received a phone call at the school where he was teaching, and a man told the secretary where Peter could pick his wallet up. Peter rushed over immediately and miraculously everything in his wallet was returned untouched. The dentist who had found the wallet in the cab spoke English and to make a fantastic story even more incredible, he offered to give Peter a free dental checkup as he had no appointments that day! Believe it or not!

Stories of honesty constantly wove their magic through our Turkish experience. If you made a purchase in a shop and you left the store with the equivalent of one cent change still owed, the sales person would chase you down the street to return the money. If you purchased a $1 item with a $20 bill and the merchant couldn’t make change, he would tell you to take your purchase home and come back with the money later. This remarkable honest and trusting attitude even extended to the carpet sellers. If you couldn’t decide among three carpets, you were told to take them all home to try them and bring back the ones you didn’t want - with no deposit or written agreement. Again, I ask, can you envision this happening in Canada ?

After reciting endless examples of these stories of kindness, honesty and goodness I began to ask the same kind of question asked in Jack’s Thai experience. My totally unscientific explanation also tended to credit the religious dominance of Turkey’s principal religion, Islam. I could only surmise that the extreme honesty that we experienced was an integral part of the Islamic teachings and the only acceptable standard of behaviour.

In Islamic countries, the faithful are called to prayer five times a day every day. Of course, there are a lot of Bayram Muslims just as there a lot of Christmas Catholics, but the daily pervasiveness of the reminder to pray and give thanks becomes deeply engrained. The only common denominator that I could determine to help explain the wonderful treatment we were exposed to was a result of the total dominance of the Islamic faith throughout the country. 

I am also not naive enough to believe that whether it is the Buddhist tradition in Thailand or the Muslim faith in Turkey, this is the only explanation for our parallel observations. There are multitudes of other factor that I won’t even delve into, but it appears to me that one of the significant factors related to the demeanour and values of the people in both Thailand and Turkey are the dominant religions of each country. 

If there is any basis to my theory where does Canada stand? Do we really stand out as different from other English speaking countries besides our use of the epithet “eh” and producing maple syrup? Do we surprise visitors to our country with our honesty and integrity like the Turks and the calm dispositions and humility like the Thais? Or has our ethnic diversity, of which we are so proud, created a cultural and religious milieu that dilutes the teachings of our Christian religions to prevent a single dominant religious identity?

Of course, none of my musings are important. What is important is to recognize the powerful way that travel and global experiences present us with new quandaries that we never would have encountered had we stayed home. Sometimes our travels just entertain us, but on occasion, they raise some issues that require a little more reflection. I think this is one of the reasons I have so loved to travel all my life.


Sorry to have bored you all with my ramblings, but then, what are good friends for?

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