Two years have passed since May 2024, when Kuwait entered an exceptional phase we have previously described as “the path toward restoring the dignity of reason.” It is not a phase free of mistakes; no human affair ever is. Yet it is a phase in which the logic of the state has come to precede the noise of politics, and in which calm has become a condition for understanding what is unfolding, not a sign that nothing is moving. Accordingly, public argument has not disappeared altogether, but it has been disciplined to a considerable degree. As for the forms of discord that were once manufactured by weaponising every governmental weakness or parliamentary shortcoming for purposes outside the public interest, they have lost much of their ability to steer the scene.

There was a time when gatherings were crowded with the forcibly optimistic, guardians of illusion, and with the slanderously pessimistic, eager to cast accusations. Even if both types once found nourishment in the logic of earlier periods, today’s phase can no longer accommodate these two modes of discourse. Neither fits the logic of the road now being taken, nor does either serve a meaningful purpose. It is as though reason has returned to its original function: reflection, understanding, and the patient drawing out of wisdom. And it is as though our gatherings, too, have returned to their original meaning: maintaining family ties and strengthening social connection. We do not object to optimism grounded in insight, nor to caution whose purpose is sincere advice. What we object to is an optimism that turns a blind eye to everything, and a pessimism that is satisfied by nothing.

Nor do we exempt ourselves. Argument is neither foreign to human nature nor strange to the human condition, even when facts are laid plainly before a person whose aims or desires have clouded his sight. This is what we recall every Friday, when Allah Almighty says: “And We have certainly diversified in this Qur’an for the people from every kind of example; but man has ever been, most of anything, prone to dispute.” The matter, in its entirety, is a test by which Allah distinguishes those who wrong themselves from those who act with fairness. If human nature can lead one to dispute even clear divine signs, then it would be unwise to imagine that the same nature would spare our daily affairs, especially on a road where reason is being repaved as a foundation, and after a period in which truth and falsehood, right and wrong, had become deeply entangled.

We do not write today to join the society of forced optimism, nor that of slanderous pessimism, nor to argue with their adherents. We are not drawn to a discourse that turns the public interest into material for rivalry rather than a matter deserving fairness. This phase does not need those who applaud every step, nor those who suspect every intention. It needs something higher than both. We write for those who can, if only for a moment, strip themselves of desire in pursuit of the public good. This is a call to read the nature of the moment, to reflect on the reality of the situation, to consider the direction of its consequences, and to proceed carefully in drawing wisdom from it.

Such a reading of this period, and of the periods that preceded it, suggests that calm and deliberation in this phase do not mean stillness, but readiness. Reform is not truly reform unless it carries a cost, measure for measure. And if there have been setbacks in some partial aims, or in organisational or administrative conduct, they remain tests along the path of a broader and far more elevated objective. That path should not be reduced to its mere stumbles.

May Allah decree for this nation a matter of right guidance.