East Kalimantan Islamic History Book Delivers Message on Nurturing Tolerance
Samarinda (ANTARA) - The launch of the book titled History of Islam in East Kalimantan: Four and a Half Centuries of Da’wah Networks, Scholars, and Civilisation from Kingdom to Republic delivers a message to the public regarding the importance of efforts to nurture tolerance in diversity.
“Lessons from figures of the past era bring Islam to life for the harmonisation of community life,” said the book’s author and public historian Muhammad Sarip in Samarinda on Friday.
Sarip revealed that historical literature summarising the propagation of Islam in East Kalimantan in a complete manner has not been updated for three decades.
This literary work, he said, comprehensively examines a span of four and a half centuries of da’wah journey from the initial milestone in 1575 to 2025.
The creative process of making this history book took three months through a series of in-depth discussions and intensive writing by a team of experts.
The manuscript compilation was also fully supported by the Samarinda Bahari Local Community Studies Centre as well as the collection of descriptive facts from families of descendants of scholarly figures.
Regarding material improvements, the compiling team realised that human compositions certainly have shortcomings, so the author is open to various reader suggestions.
The Rector of Mulawarman University (Unmul), Abdunnur, assessed that Islamic teachings entered by prioritising respect for differences as social community values.
“The interaction of religious teachings blended with the dynamics of local East Kalimantan culture ultimately becomes a unique strength for societal harmony to this day,” he stated.
Abdunnur noted that the egalitarian values taught by previous scholars also build equality of human degrees without distinguishing race, ethnicity, or religious background.
Mulawarman University will later make this work the main offering in the Borneo Universities Consortium (KUUB) conference in July 2026.
The KUUB conference is an international forum that brings together representatives of higher education institutions from three country clusters, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei Darussalam.
Abdunnur hopes that this book will become a reference for international universities in understanding the dynamics of Islamic propagation development on Kalimantan soil more comprehensively.