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There is an irony that is always funny in this country. Sometimes, someone has not had time to get off the plane, but the rejection has already landed. Perhaps this is how the times work: the body comes later, the noise arrives first.
That was what accompanied Ustaz Abdul Somad’s arrival to West Kutai Regency in early July 2026. Before the plane’s wheels actually touched the runway at Melalan Airport, news about the rejection was already spinning faster than the propellers of social media. In digital spaces, people throw beliefs at each other like they are taking part in a javelin throwing competition, only the target is not the scoreboard, but fellow citizens.
Fortunately, the real world is often more sane than the virtual world.
When the plane door opened, what appeared were religious figures, representatives of the Ministry of Religion, security forces and the public who welcomed the preacher’s arrival. There are no dramatic scenes as envisioned by the screenwriters in the comments column. There was no big fuss. There is no revolution. There were only people shaking hands, like normal humans when meeting other humans.
It’s also funny when you think about it.
In a country that is so fond of talking about tolerance, sometimes we are the most intolerant of people who haven’t had the chance to open their mouths. We judge before we hear, we are quicker to convict than to understand. It’s as if prejudice has turned into express service: arrive in seconds.
In fact, the preaching that night continued at the Melak Islamic Center. The congregation comes. Tausiah was delivered. The next day, Ustaz Abdul Somad attended the Assalam Islamic Boarding School’s 34th Birthday celebration. In this series of activities, the Minister of Religion, Nazaruddin Umar, was also present to take part in the National Gathering with religious leaders. The agenda is running as it should; simple, orderly, even almost boring for those who expected drama from the start.
Maybe that’s our problem today.
We love conflict too much. If an event ends peacefully, some people are disappointed because they lose the uploaded material. Harmony never goes viral as long as arguments can still be harvested into content.
A few days earlier, in Balikpapan, Ustaz Abdul Somad also delivered a sermon to the East Kalimantan Regional Police. He talked about the importance of integrity, professionalism and spiritual strength for police officers, especially when East Kalimantan is preparing to become a strategic area along with the development of the Indonesian capital.
The advice is actually simple: the greater the trust, the greater the need to guard the heart.
Unfortunately, such advice is often louder than voices that prefer to foster suspicion. We live in a time when algorithms are happier promoting anger than wisdom. Because anger produces clicks, while wisdom only produces calm—and calm apparently isn’t a salable commodity.
Perhaps this is the greatest satire of our digital democracy. Everyone claims to want unity, but some want it on the condition that only their voices can be heard. Everyone claims to defend diversity, but secretly hopes that diversity stops just when it starts to be different from themselves.
In the end, the visit ended without explosions, without riots, without excessive heroic tales. What remains is the old lesson that keeps repeating itself: this nation is actually still capable of living side by side. It’s just that sometimes the noise sounds much louder than reality.
Maybe because peace has never been good at shouting.
He just came, worked in silence, then went home without having time to become a trending topic.
Source: https://m.kumparan.com/kumparannews/…ng-27jH5UcqXwA
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