Honesty

I can't resist posting this. He's got a point.



"A friend of mine knows a guy from the Pashtun region of Afghanistan. The guy told my friend that if he wanted to send money home, he would do it by giving cash to someone from the same culture who was traveling back. “What?” asked my friend. “Someone you know, or just anyone?”

“Anyone”, said the Pashtun guy. “He will take the money as far as he can, and then he will give it to someone else, and that person will take it as far as he can, and then he will give it to someone, who will give it to my family.”

Wow.

I relayed this tale to a friend who lives in Istanbul. “Oh yes,” she said. “I regularly take a bus route through the center of the city. The bus is so crowded you have to squash on. There’ll be about 200 people on there.

“The bus has three doors, and you’re supposed to get on in front, but you can’t, because it’s so full, so people get on through all three doors. You need to stamp your bus-pass, or buy a ticket, at the front, but you can’t move. So people pass their bus-pass up the bus, hand to hand.

“I’ve seen twenty lira notes go up the bus, hand to hand, and I’ve seen the change come back the same way. Imagine that in England–that money wouldn’t go further than two hands before some guy pocketed it.”

Indeed.

When did we, in the US and UK, lose our honesty? Or rather, as I’d like to ask the person who ripped off MY stuff from the trunk of my car this summer, when did we start assuming that because you CAN take something, you have the RIGHT to?

Of course there are problems with the shadow side of honor in Islam–I’m not idealising that culture either. But there is something fine in a culture where not only do people insist on paying for their bus-ride, and thereby supporting the public transport infrastructure that makes their city bearable, but also pass each other’s hard-earned cash without stealing it.

When the common people rip each other off, there’s something nasty in the air. It’s not just about a few coins, it’s about solidarity, community, mutual respect of the hard work of someone just like you, trying to make an honest living. There’s something fine in those values."