Murad Ebrahim

Murad Ebrahim (born 1949), born Ahod Balawag Ebrahim, is a Moro politician and former guerrilla commander. He joined the Moro underground in 1968, took "Murad" as his nom de guerre, and rose through the Moro National Liberation Front and then the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which he has chaired since 2003. After the Bangsamoro Organic Law of 2018 he served as the first interim chief minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, from 2019 to 2025. ^{1 2}

Ahod Balawag Ebrahim was born on 15 May 1949 in the historical province of Cotabato, the youngest of four children of an Islamic preacher; he lost his mother at one and his father at thirteen. He studied at Cotabato Public High School, began at Mindanao State University in Marawi, and transferred to Notre Dame University in Cotabato City to study civil engineering, leaving in his final year, 1970, to commit himself to the Moro movement. The birth date is debated in the sources: the Malay article gives 15 May 1948 and Wikidata 2 May 1948; this record follows the English article's dated press profile and preserves both variants in the data record. ^{1 3 2}

Recruited into the MNLF in 1968, Ebrahim was part of the "Top 300" trainees sent to Malaysia and commanded the movement's Kutawato Revolutionary Committee in Central Mindanao. When Hashim Salamat broke away to form the MILF, Ebrahim went with him, serving as vice chair for military affairs and chief of staff of the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces, and as the group's chief negotiator with the Philippine government. On Salamat's death in 2003 he became MILF chairman. ^{1 4}

Ebrahim campaigned for the ratification of the Bangsamoro Organic Law and was sworn in by President Rodrigo Duterte on 22 February 2019 as interim chief minister of the new Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, leading its 80-member transition authority and pursuing a policy of "moral governance". He retained the post when President Bongbong Marcos appointed a new transition authority in 2022, and left office on 3 March 2025 ahead of the region's first parliamentary elections, declining a seat as a regular member. No source read for this record names a religious school for Murad Ebrahim, and this record records none. ^{1 2}

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
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