Integrating Local Wisdom Into Da’wah Management for Interfaith Peacebuilding: Evidence From Muslim, Catholic, and Confucian Residents of Lam Bheu, Aceh Besar

Studies of interfaith relations in Indonesia tend to measure harmony at the aggregate level, leaving the everyday mechanisms that produce coexistence in religiously mixed villages largely undocumented. This article examines how local wisdom is incorporated into the management of da’wah in Lam Bheu Village (Gampong Lam Bheu), Aceh Besar, and how this incorporation works as a mechanism of peacebuilding among Muslim, Catholic, and Confucian residents. Using a qualitative case-study design, data were collected between May and June 2026 through in-depth interviews with nine purposively selected informants (the mosque imam, a da’wah steward, the village head (keuchik), a customary leader, a Muslim resident, and a formal representative and an ordinary resident from each of the Catholic and Confucian communities), supplemented by participant observation and documentary analysis. The data were analyzed using the Miles and Huberman interactive model, with source and technique triangulation. Three findings emerge. First, decisions on da’wah content and scheduling are reached collectively through musyawarah (consultative deliberation) involving mosque administrators, imams, customary leaders, and village authorities. Second, local values function both as sermon content and as method: gotong royong (mutual cooperation), condolence visits, and village festivities become the medium of da’wah bil-hal (da’wah through deeds), bringing Muslim and non-Muslim residents into the same social space without extending worship across the boundary. Third, da’wah is calibrated along a line that residents themselves articulate as mixing in social affairs while observing limits in worship, which also governs the handling of minor friction. The study specifies da’wah management as a boundary-conscious and collectively coordinated practice and extends participatory communication theory to a configuration in which participation and religious particularity coexist. Because the evidence derives from a single village and a small purposive sample, the argument is offered as a context-specific account rather than a transferable model.