Abdurrahman Wahid

KH Abdurrahman Wahid (September 7, 1940 — December 30, 2009), called  Gus Dur, was the president of Indonesia from October 20, 1999 to July 23, 2001. He was the first elected president after the end of the Suharto government. He was removed from office in 2001 on charges of being corrupt.

He was buried in Jombang, East Java, where a crowd of about 5,000 people went to the funeral. He had been very ill for a long time and was blind.

Early life
Wahid was born in Jombang, East Java, in 1940. His grandfather started Indonesia's biggest Muslim organization, the Nahdlatul Ulama, or NU. His father was the first Indonesian minister of religious affairs. The family moved to Jakarta in 1944. In 1959 he went back to Jombang, where he became a teacher and later a school principal. In 1963 he won a scholarship to go to Egypt and study at al-Azhar University in Cairo. He later studied in Baghdad and in the Netherlands. He returned to Indonesia in 1971 and worked as a journalist.

References

Category:1940 births
Category:2009 deaths
Category:Indonesian Muslims
Category:Presidents of Indonesia
Category:Al-Azhar University alumni