Syed Manzoor Naqi Rizvi

Dr. Syed Manzoor Naqi Rizvi has practiced as a cardiologist and internist in New Jersey since 1980, and is one of the founding figures of the Shia community in the New York/New Jersey area. Son of the scholar Maulana Hamid Husain Rizvi Ushravi, he earned his MBBS from King George Medical College in Lucknow, taught briefly at Aligarh Muslim University's medical college, and directed a hospital in Al-Qariyat, Saudi Arabia, before completing his residency and cardiology fellowship at Albert Einstein Medical College in the Bronx. He settled in New Jersey in the early 1970s after first arriving in the US via Cleveland, Ohio.

He founded Muslim Foundation Inc. (MFI) in 1980, serving as its President and later Chairperson for over three decades, and built it into a central socio-economic and religious organization for the community, including an 18-year run as founder and principal of MFI's Islamic Sunday School in Englewood, NJ. Alongside MFI, he established Message of Peace (Pyame Aman), a publishing house that produced a national magazine from 1982-1992 and has released over 45 books on Islamic topics, with Dr. Rizvi serving as chief editor for roughly 20 years.

He has been involved in organizing some of the community's longest-running annual programs, including Husain Day (since 1979), Mustafa Day, and Imam Ali Day, along with a long-running Milad-e-Maqasida and an annual Musalema. He helped establish a Shia weekly camp under MFI, assisted in bringing resident scholars to the New Jersey/New York area (including Maulana Tilmiz Hasnain Rizvi and Maulana Safi Haider), supported founding a Hawza in Medina, NY, and has run a decades-long prison outreach project sending Shia literature to inmates. He is also one of the key figures behind Masjid Ali in New Jersey, one of the first purpose-built Shia mosques and community complexes in North America. He has authored several books, including "Imam Ali, the Man of All Era" and a "Textbook on Shia Islam," and writes religious poetry in Urdu.