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| Sunday, 22 August 2004 |
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Some analogies to illustrate the unethical nature of conversions One of the outstanding features of the Judeo-Christian culture is the intensity and the rapidity with which conventional ideas and systems change. These changes were not always in the right direction. Some of the most devastating and destructive changes are in the field of social and moral standards. In Western society today it has come to a stage that it is no longer possible to consider what is the right moral standard or the social standard. Some sceptics may even ask what moral standard or social standard is? I do not intend to go into a well debated philosophical question on morals. I only say, we in the East have a fairly clear view of what is meant by right moral or social behaviour. To justify these changes they in the West have coined many words, which have very vague connotations. Some of these are political rightness, un-Australian or un-American, right of speech, right to arm, right of self-defense, right of self-determination, etc. In the West people are no longer sure about what is right and what is wrong. They worry a lot about cruelty to dogs, cats or animals in general but fail to understand angling and horse racing too is cruelty to animals. They make a big fuss about children being used in making shoes or carpets in Asian factories, but fail to see their own paperboys or trolley collectors in supermarkets also being exploited by the big companies. This failure to see things objectively in the West, is the main cause for the conflicts between the Judeo-Christian societies and the rest of the world. One reason behind this failure is their pompous, self satisfying and condescending view of infallibility of everything that originates in the West. In this light, it is not surprising why those who are influenced by the Western culture, cannot comprehend the gravity of the phenomena, which is now regarded as a scourge of the Western globalisation, the unethical conversion. It is worth while to consider some analogies to get a clear understanding of this case. In this regard I intend to use two striking analogies, which compares very well with the ethics confounded in these activities. The first one is the similarity between the action of a man who is trying to seduce a woman for sex and the unethical conversion. There is no illegality in the circumstances in which a man is seducing a woman. The most agreeable way for both parties is to have this sexual harmony, as two grown up individuals, woman agreeing on a par with the man purely for pleasure or for love. Any other way of seducing a woman will be trespassing into the arena of unethical behaviour or even to the criminal domain, which may cause the man to be punished in a court of law. Men use all sorts of pathetic ruses to make woman succumb to his desires. These vary from sheer force, harassment, power, money, etc. to drugs. No more arguments are necessary to show that the unethical conversions fall into the same unethical code of conduct as the violation of a woman. In both cases one party violates the human dignity of the other. The people involved in unethical conversions, in addition to the above mentioned manoeuvres, may even use sex as an inducement. This is a very common method in converting young men. In unethical conversions, as in violation of a woman, one party uses the power, force, harassment, money and other inducements, all sorts of lies, thuggery, etc. to get whatever they want. The other analogy I have employed here is another scourge of the western globalisation, the aggressive advertising. In fact, I would say unethical conversion is a form of aggressive advertising. This is such a menace in the West and in many parts of Asia, it would not be very long before the governments will introduce laws curbing aggressive advertising. What is aggressive advertising? All activities related to this type of advertising are in the same league as unethical conversions. Whoever first mentioned the now hackneyed phrase that good products need no advertisements, must have been thinking about unethical conversions. In both cases there is door-to-door selling, which had become a nuisance to the public, both use unsubstantiated lies, both spend large sums of money, both exploit the human weaknesses such as greed, lust, ignorance, avarice, and many others in the process. How can any decent human being say "yes" to unethical conversions? As with the other two cases I cited here as parallels the only way open to curb this menace is to bring in laws as early as possible, before our country loses all its remaining cultural values. - Waruna Fernando |
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