Abu Humayd, Abang Sufri Mahmud was born in the city of Miri in Borneo Malaysia in 1983. He went to government-run Islamic schools since he was 13 years old; first to SMK (A) Sheikh Hj Othman Bin Abdul Wahhab, Kuching, and later to SMK Agama Miri, both in the state of Sarawak, Malaysia.
Sufri Mahmud then obtained a Diploma in Public Administration from MARA University of Technology (UiTM), Malaysia, and he was awarded the Best Student of the program in 2005. He later obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration (BBA) majoring in International Business with 1st class honors, also from UiTM. He has been studying in the BA in Islamic Studies (BAIS) program of IOU since 2011 and is currently studying the Qur`an and its tafseer under an Albanian scholar, Shaykh Ibrahim Zaimaj Al-Albani, who is recognized and recommended by Shaykh Shu`ayb Al-Arna`oot, an infamous hadeeth scholar of the present time. At the same time, he also studies Saheeh Muslim under Shaykh `Abdurrahman Bin `Abdul Kareem Al-`Uthmaan, who had studied under the late Shaykh Al-`Uthaymeen and Shaykh `Abdul Muhsin Al-`Abbad in Saudi Arabia.
Between 2012 and 2014, Sufri Mahmud conducted various corporate trainings in Kuala Lumpur and Miri in Malaysia on the topics including customer service, business management, and entrepreneurship. He has been an approved trainer by Human Resource Development Fund (HRDF) in Malaysia since 2013. He moved to the state of Selangor, Malaysia, in 2014 and joined Daarul Hadeeth Treatment Centre, concentrating on treating people who suffered from demonic possession and other related illnesses by using ruqyah shar`eeyah, based on the Qur`an and the Sunnah. After that, in 2015, he joined Yayasan Ta`lim, a da`wah organization in Malaysia, and helped them established a Diploma in Islamic Studies program. He left the organization to join IOU full-time in early 2016 as a country representative and as an assistant lecturer.
Apart from that, he also teaches, lectures, and teaches courses in various masajid and Islamic centres in Malaysia including Masjid Ash-Shareef in Klang, Masjid Al-Mustaqeem in Ampang, Yayasan Ta`lim in KualaLumpur, and others. He has authored and translated a number of books on various topics, mainly on the tazkiyah an-nafs (purification of the soul), ruqyah shar`eeyah (Islamic exorcism), and others that have been published and sold nationwide