Anwar Ibrahim

Anwar Ibrahim (born 1947) is a Malaysian politician who has served as the country's tenth prime minister since 24 November 2022. A student and Islamic youth leader who co-founded the Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement (ABIM), he joined UMNO in 1982, rose through the education and finance ministries to become deputy prime minister in 1993, was sacked and imprisoned in 1998, freed in 2004 after his sodomy conviction was overturned, imprisoned a second time in 2015 and pardoned in 2018, and reached the premiership after the 2022 general election at the head of the Pakatan Harapan coalition. ^{1 2}

Anwar bin Ibrahim was born on 10 August 1947 at Cherok Tok Kun, Bukit Mertajam, in the Crown Colony of Penang; in 2023 he himself stated that he was born at Sungai Bakap, Seberang Perai, and both birthplaces are carried in this record's data. His father, Ibrahim bin Abdul Rahman, began as a hospital porter and became an UMNO member of parliament and parliamentary secretary to the health ministry; his mother, Che Yan binti Hussein, was active in UMNO's women's wing in Penang. Anwar was educated at Bukit Mertajam High School and the Malay College Kuala Kangsar, and took a bachelor's degree in Malay studies at the University of Malaya. ^{1 3}

At university Anwar led the National Union of Malaysian Muslim Students, and he was a founding leader and second president of ABIM, the Islamic youth movement. In 1974 he was detained without trial under the Internal Security Act and spent twenty months at Kamunting; he later worked on a master's degree during that detention. From 1975 to 1982 he represented the Asia-Pacific region for the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, and in 1981 he co-founded the International Institute of Islamic Thought in the United States. In 1982, the year he became ABIM's president, he joined UMNO under Mahathir Mohamad and was elected member of parliament for Permatang Pauh. ¹

Anwar entered the cabinet in 1982 and held the culture, youth and sports portfolio in 1983 and agriculture in 1984 before becoming minister of education in 1986, where his changes included restoring the national language's name to Bahasa Melayu and where he was elected president of UNESCO's General Conference. As minister of finance from 1991 he won international praise — Asiamoney named him Finance Minister of the Year in 1996 — and during the 1997 Asian financial crisis he imposed austerity, refused bail-outs and backed the IMF approach, against Mahathir's instincts. He became deputy prime minister in 1993 and acting prime minister during Mahathir's holiday in 1997, but the two men's visions of governance had already diverged. ^{1 3}

On 2 September 1998 Mahathir sacked Anwar from the cabinet; he was expelled from UMNO the next day and arrested on 20 September under the Internal Security Act. In custody he was beaten by the inspector-general of police, appearing in court with a black eye. In April 1999 he was sentenced to six years for corruption and, two months later, to nine years for sodomy; Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience. His dismissal launched the Reformasi movement and the party that became Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR). On 2 September 2004 the Federal Court overturned the sodomy conviction and he was released. ¹

Anwar led the opposition from 2008, merging its parties into coalitions that broke the ruling coalition's two-thirds majority. A second sodomy prosecution ended in a five-year sentence in 2015; he was still in prison when Pakatan Harapan, now allied with Mahathir, won the 2018 election, and a full royal pardon freed him days later. After that coalition collapsed in 2020 he led the opposition again until the hung election of November 2022, when the king appointed him prime minister of a unity government; he also kept the finance portfolio, as his predecessors' rivals had once feared he never would. As prime minister he has pursued subsidy and death-penalty reforms and, as ASEAN chairman in 2025, helped broker a Thailand–Cambodia ceasefire. His filiation is recorded in prose only, his father having no record in this collection; and no source read for this record names a religious school for Anwar Ibrahim — his decades of Islamic activism are organisational history, not an attestation of a school — so this record records none. ^{1 2}

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