Fuad Masum

Masum studied at religious schools in Kurdistan until the age of eighteen, then read law and Sharia at Baghdad University and completed his higher education at Al-Azhar in Cairo, taking a doctorate in Islamic philosophy there in 1975. He taught at Basrah University, moved through the Iraqi Communist Party and the Kurdistan Democratic Party before joining the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and served as the first prime minister of the PUK-administered part of the Kurdistan Region in 1992–1994. After 2003 he sat in the Iraqi parliament and acted as its speaker in 2010. ^{1 2}

Elected president after the 2014 parliamentary election, Masum succeeded his old comrade Jalal Talabani — both men's articles attest the succession at both ends — and in August 2014 charged Haider al-Abadi with forming a government. Barham Salih succeeded him in October 2018. ^{1 3}

His faith is recorded as unknown. The English article's infobox names his religion as Sunni Islam and Wikidata carries the same value, but these are one source family; the Arabic article's infobox gives Islam in general and its Sunni category filings do not count. His religious schooling and his Al-Azhar doctorate are formation, not an attestation of a personal school. ^{1 2 4}