Sofjan Saury Siregar

Sofjan Saury Siregar was an Indonesian religious scholar, community leader, and presidential contender. He was born on 5 January 1951 in Tapanuli Selatan, a region in North Sumatra. He studied at the Islamic State University Sunan Kalijaga in Yogyakarta, the Islamic University of Madinah in Saudi Arabia, and the Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh. He was one of the participants of the Youth Pledge, a historic event that declared the unity of the Indonesian nation in 1928. He also joined the race for the Indonesian presidency in 2004 and 2014, but failed to gain enough support. He founded a new political party named Partai Maslahat Rakyat in 2002. He was also the chairman of the European chapter of the Indonesian Association of Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI) between 2000 and 2015. He was known for his advocacy for human rights and religious freedom in Indonesia and abroad. He was named Ambassador for Peace by the Universal Peace Federation (UPF) in 2003. He authored De Edele Koran, a contemporary Dutch translation of the Quran, that is widely used in the Netherlands and Belgium. He died on 23 October 2017 in Novi Pazar, Serbia, due to COVID-19. He was buried at a cemetery in Novi Pazar.