On the Threshold of the Christian Year 2026

Musa Akrami

The new year arrives in the Christian calendar,
not as a blank page that erases the past,
but as a question asked once again of us:
with who we were,
with what we did,
and with what we lost -
how do we now choose to remain human?

2026 is neither a promise of miracles
nor the end of darkness.
The world remains wounded:
by wars that have become ordinary,
by truths buried beneath the rubble of lies,
and by human beings who are consumed
more often than they are truly seen.
And it is precisely in this fractured world
that responsibility begins.

Politics, when severed from ethics,
is reduced to the cold management of power;
and ethics, when detached from politics,
turns into an ineffectual refuge.
The hope of our time lies not
in dreaming of an imaginary peace,
but in building a possible one:
a peace that does not sacrifice truth to expediency,
does not postpone justice,
and does not reduce compassion
to a private emotion.

For Iran,
I wish the new year to be
a year of returning to trust:
trust among people,
between generations,
between history and the future.

No society endures through fear,
and no land flourishes through humiliation.
If Iran is to rise again,
it will not be through violence,
nor through hatred,
but through the rebuilding of a shared moral horizon,
and through a courageous reconciliation with truth.

And for the world,
I wish that rationality may once again find courage,
and that being human may once again become a virtue.
May borders close less often to people
and more often to lies, oppression, and war.
May technology serve dignity,
the economy serve life,
and power serve responsibility.

If the Christian year 2026 -
as a year that comes
and a year that will pass -
has any meaning at all,
it is this:
that it is still possible to say “no” -
no to the narrative of inevitable war
- a common political falsehood -
no to normalized injustice,
no to imposed despair,
no to what emerges from the collapse
of reason, ethics, and dialogue.

And it is still possible to say “yes” -
yes to dialogue,
to conscious empathy,
to a peace that is built, not merely declared.

The new year arrives,
bearing with it this simple yet difficult reminder:
history is not shaped by victors alone;
at times,
those who remain faithful to truth
alter the path of the future.

With hope for a year
in which the human being
remains the measure.

Thursday, 11 Dey 1404 / 1 January 2026