Ahmad Syafi'i Maarif was born on 31 May 1935 in the Nagari of Calau, in the present-day Sumpur Kudus District of Sijunjung Regency in West Sumatra.

His father, Ma'rifah Rauf Datuk Rajo Malayu, was a gambier trader and the chief elder in his region.

In 1942, he enrolled at Sekolah Rakyat, a local elementary school open to native students under the colonial system.

Under the ensuing economic hardships his family experienced, he was unable to resume his education until 1950, when he again enrolled in a madrasa managed by Muhammadiyah, this time in Tanah Datar Regency.

During his time there, Maarif was a youth member of Muhammadiyah's scouting organization, Hizbul Wathan [id].

[5] He then received a Fulbright Scholarship to study history at Ohio University in 1972, obtaining a master's degree in 1976.

Following the fall of Suharto, Muhammadiyah's then-chairman Amien Rais resigned to take part in politics and run for president in the 1999 election.

During his tenure, he made efforts to distance the Muhammadiyah organization from day-to-day politics, especially from Rais' National Mandate Party.

[11] Muhammadiyah under Maarif also opposed motions by Islamic parties in the parliament to introduce Sharia laws into the Constitution of Indonesia.

He considered efforts by Islamic scholars to build a state out of an institutional structure within the Quran as "intellectual laziness".

[8] In an opinion piece dated 2 December 2016, he defended Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (more popularly known as Ahok), then-incumbent Governor of Jakarta, who was accused of blasphemy by some leading Muslims in Indonesia.