From 1984 to 1999 he directed the Nadhlatul Ulama, the world's largest Muslim organization.
He was also for 15 years head of the world's largest Islamic organization, the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU).
The result is that many of Indonesia's ulama, or religious scholars, turn out to become modern intellectuals.
For example, until their recent work, it was believed in academia that ulama was only played by men.
These constitute the top-ranking ulama, deemed to have the authority to issue opinions on matters facing Islam and Muslims.
Both Singapore and Japan distributed part of their emergency assistance last year through mass Muslim organizations Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama.
Ulama is played on a long, narrow court, called a taste, which is 60 metres long and only four metres wide.
The leading Muslim religious leaders' group, the All Ceylon Jamiyathul Ulama, has warned against violence by strikers and says Muslims should fast instead.
It reveres the Islamic scholars, known by the Arabic term ulama or the Javanese term kiai, whose influence remains strong in east Java.
Its chance of succeeding seemed to improve sharply with the election of Mr Wahid, the former head of the world's biggest Muslim organisation, Indonesia's Nahdlatul Ulama.
In this week's poll, supporters of the Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, Indonesia's two biggest Muslim organisations, plumped for many different candidates of varying degrees of piety.
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She says they would meet at his home or at the headquarters of Nahdlatul Ulama, the country's largest mass Muslim organization which Wahid led at the time.
At the same time, the wily leader of Nahdlatul Ulama, the 30-million-strong Muslim mass movement, was constantly positioning and repositioning himself in the byzantine world of Indonesian politics.
Gus Dur, the chief of Nahdlatul Ulama, a rural-based Muslim group that boasts 30 million members as well as its own political vehicle, the National Awakening Party (PKB).
Only Muslims can decide how they balance legislation by men and what the community -- or at least its legal guardians, the ulama -- has historically seen as divine commandments.
Wahid's National Awakening Party (PKB), based on the 30-million-strong Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) mass Muslim movement that he leads, was considered the PDI-P's natural partner in the coming coalition-building battle for the presidency.
Dr Aguilar, though, is less concerned with the details of the rules of the game, but with its social implications, both in Sinaloa today, and in Mesoamerica generally over the course of ulama's history.
First-hand experience has caused Dr Brady to revise his understanding of the significance of tributes paid in the 16th century to the Aztec empire, when ulama balls were used as a de facto currency.
In the run-up to the October presidential election, Wahid, then head of the Nahdlatul Ulama mass Muslim organization (which claims 30 million members), visited Rais at the latter's office at Muhammadiyah (another mass Muslim group).
Both Dr Brady and Dr Aguilar have tried to play ulama themselves, but Dr Aguilar says that, although some of his graduate students persevered for longer, the bruises he sustained from the heavy ball caused him quickly to abandon playing the game.
However, as Dr Aguilar and his colleagues point out in a series of papers forthcoming in the May issue of Estudios Jaliscienses, a Mexican journal, the rules of ulama are still today in flux, and often not even understood by the participants.
The half-blind cleric--who leads the Nadhlatul Ulama, a moderate Muslim organization with 30 million members--has actually won greater support from a loose coalition of eight Islamic parties known as the Central Axis than from his own PKB, which still claims to back Megawati.
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