Do we possess reason? (2)

Even so, politics is not a business done by foolish people. The problem might be stated as follows from the perspective of a modern nation-state: Who creates the reason and mind that takes action to govern the society? Is it politics or bureaucracy? We know from Weber that bureaucratic organization has established an effective control over human life in modern society. Bureaucracy becomes even stronger when it relies on technology. Even in countries like Turkey, where the military coup tradition is visibly strong, technological advances become influential and workable to prevent such coups. Even a minor coup attempt is publicized via recorded conversations posted on the Internet.

Technology and bureaucratic organization do not always work for the benefit of the people; we may argue that they might be detrimental to democracy sometimes. German Erhard Stölting does not agree with this. He holds that people are a union formed by humans sharing the same principles. This requires equality. People have become sovereign because the individuals of the Enlightenment considered themselves as equals. This means that the people have reason. But we all know experimentally that the individual may not act reasonably all the time. In such cases, the people should be made reasonable; the Enlightenment serves as a political formation that makes people reasonable at times when they fail to act reasonably.  

A problem appears at this point: both dictatorships and democracies argue that they represent the historical reason and mind of the people. This means that those who acquire the authority to represent the people hold the right to deal with the others -- mindless and irrational actors. For instance, we should recall that during the discussions over a new constitution, the Republican People's Party (CHP) leader said the national representation in Parliament and the will of the founders of the republic in the early 20th century were fairly different. According to the CHP, the national will or the reason of the people is not superior to the founding will.

I can't help but advance this question considering that we have come so far: What is the relationship between constitutions and reason? According to some of the founders of modern theory, reason is superior to reason. Democracies have institutions that protect constitutions. In other words, they protect the regime from the people who may sometimes act unreasonably. I also can't help thinking about whether Article 35 of the Internal Service Code has something to do with this; the article recognizes the military as the protector of the regime. If some people act to reintroduce an older regime, they should be recognized as unreasonable; so, it will be a duty to protect the country against such actors.

The questions in no way end here; who is reasonable, and who is unreasonable? In other words, when is it proper to call people reasonable and when unreasonable? The Western Enlightenment regards a non-Western discourse as unreasonable. In this case, you suddenly become unreasonable if you attempt to redefine democracy relying on your own standards and traditions. In such a case, you actually mean to say that you need to locate the reason of your own history or have a better government. So we go back to Farabi's premises: let us govern our home, city and country and body by our own reason and mind.

This is a fairly dangerous idea; only Muslim intellectuals promote this idea. So it becomes evident why the modern system does not agree with Islam and the intellectuals calling the entire world for a struggle for ethics, freedom and justice. In your struggle against the West, you may be liberal, leftist, Marxist, socialist, nationalist or rightist conservative. But Islam offers a different reason and mind. You become one of the others because of the system; in other words, the flags of modern states are all the same size; only the colors and symbols are different.