Dear old Gus Dur of Indonesia is the one of the best Muslims I have ever known. He’s a holy man whose life of prayer reflects vividly in the life he leads. He is humble, gentle, kindly and noble.

I used to talk to him back in Jakarta, years ago, before he became Indonesia’s first democratically elected president as Abdurrahman Wahid. Gus Dur is his Javanese nickname and he was the leader of the PKB party in the post-Soeharto ruins, and with Amien Rais of the more Islamic-fundamentalist Muhammadiyah/PAN faction, and Megawati Soekarnoputri of the very secular, abangan, ecumenical PDI-P, the three of these leaders formed the core of the anti-Soeharto opposition. Amien was too extreme for some voters, and Megawati was too dumb for others, so in the gentle, religious, anti-fanatical, scholarly Gus Dur, Indonesia’s voters found the perfect compromise leader in getting Indonesia’s first halting steps of democracy off the ground in late 1998. And oh what a relief he was after the hideous, clown-like Soeharto successor, President B.J. Habibie.

People who know Gus Dur love him. He was a blind cleric, and a kiai, which is a Javanese title of honor for a religious teacher, and he learned Islam by studying with Ayatollah Sistani of Iraq. He always stood for tolerance, for respect for others, for freedom of conscience, for simplicity and for decency. And he never politicized religion. He was too frail to be president for long, but as president, he is kindly remembered.

Today, via Real Clear Politics, he has an essay in the Washington Post denouncing Islamofascism as fake Islam and explaining to people what real Islam is. He uses the example of the conversion to Christianity of a Muslim man in Afghanistan and how real Muslims, those who value their faith and identity, should respond to it.

Gus Dur is a scholar, and a man who has lived with many things, including injustice himself, and he really knows.

It is good to see him speaking out. Because of him, I never fell into the trap I sometimes see Americans fall into, which is to think Islam is evil or Islam is unreformable, or Islam is always a disaster. Gus Dur, for many decades, has shown otherwise. And his wise words are now in today’s Washington Post.

Read the whole thing here.

UPDATE: I swear every encounter I ever have with Gus Dur has a trace of magic to it. When I saw him in New York, I was looking for my friend, a Tempo magazine correspondent visiting from Jakarta as part of Gus Dur’s entourage, on my way to see her, I got the name of the hotel wrong. I went to the Plaza, and no one knew. I asked for the Gus Dur entourage, and they had no idea. Then the hotel staff suggested I try the Palace Hotel. I knew it was wrong, but I went up to the hotel staff and asked for my friend’s name. No dice. Desperate, I asked for Gus Dur’s name. Him, they had. Having no idea who he was, they put my call through, and, ayyyy, I asked Gus Dur himself in his hotel room if he knew where his own press entourage was. He knew. He kindly told me to go to the UN Plaza Hotel, a glassy building across the street from the UN. Sure enough, he was right, but what a guy to get directions from in New York City – the president of Indonesia!

Just now, I opened my Snapfish pictures, and whose pic should be looking at me, but Gus Dur himself! It’s an old photo I took around 2000 or so, when he came to the UN to visit. It had been in my pile of undeveloped films for a long time and I didn’t realize it was that old when I sent it in. It’s raggedy, it’s partly exposed, but cripes, what a Gus-Dur coincidence, in a blue shirt, it’s him! Here he is!

How weird is that?????