Nation and Character Building: The Narrative of Nationality in Habib Ja'far Assegaf's Dakwah on YouTube

Abstract

The Hadrami Arab tribe is one of the ethnic groups that continue to experience dynamic involvement in nation and character development efforts in Indonesia. Habaib as a cleric or preacher of Hadrami ethnic origin has a strategic position to be involved in nation and character building and present a narrative of national values in his preaching. The issue of nation and character development is important in maintaining the unity of a pluralistic society like Indonesia. One of them is a big challenge in maintaining a sense of unity and nationality. To make all this happen, support is needed from all parties and all levels of society to get involved and contribute together. The development of new media such as YouTube has recently given rise to preachers who use social media as a tool for preaching. One of them is the young cleric Habib Ja’far Assegaf who has almost 1.4 million subscribers. This young Habib is known as a preacher who consistently encourages tolerance and peace. This research aims to find and analyze Habib Ja’far’s preaching messages containing national values on the Jeda Nulis YouTube channel. A qualitative-descriptive approach was used to analyze video recordings of Habib Ja’far’s preaching. The research results show that the da’wah message conveyed by Habib Ja’far contains national values that are useful for contributing to nation and character building in Indonesia. Keywords: nation and character building, habib, social media