Mulla Asgharali M. M. Jaffer

Al-Hajj Mulla Asgharali M. M. Jaffer (April 14, 1937 – March 21, 2000), universally known as Mulla Asghar or Mulla Saheb, was a Kenyan-born Khoja Shia Ithna-Asheri scholar and community leader who became the founding president of the World Federation of Khoja Shia Ithna-Asheri Muslim Communities (KSIMC). Born in Mombasa, Kenya, the eldest son of Mulla M.M. Jaffer, he took over his father's optician's shop in Mombasa's old town after his father's death in 1960, and by the late 1960s had built a large optical surfacing factory in Nairobi with his brothers. Largely self-taught, he became fluent in six to seven languages (English, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Kiswahili and his native Gujarati) and was internationally recognized by scholars and laity alike for his depth of religious knowledge.

He rose through the leadership of the Africa Federation of Khoja Shia Ithna-Asheri communities — serving as Honorary Secretary (1965–1968), Vice Chairman (1971–1974), and Chairman (1974–1980) — steering the community through crises including the 1963 Zanzibar Revolution and its aftermath. Following the 1972 expulsion of Asians from Uganda by Idi Amin, which brought thousands of displaced Khoja Shia Muslims to Britain, Mulla Asghar relocated to London and in 1976 founded the World Federation of KSIMC, becoming its first president. Under his leadership the WF established Islamic centres across Britain (including Stanmore, Peterborough, Birmingham, Leicester, and London), became a member of the Muslim Council of Britain, and extended its charitable work — including the Zainabiya Child Sponsorship Scheme and the Einullah Eye Clinics in Lucknow, India and Mianwali, Pakistan — well beyond the Khoja community to Sunnis, Zoroastrians, and Hindus alike.

In 1983, while visiting his friend and mentor Grand Ayatollah Abul Qasim al-Khoei in Iraq, he and his wife were arrested by Saddam Hussein's government and held for several months in a Baghdad jail, where he was tortured before international pressure secured his release — an ordeal later recounted in the book I Was Saddam's Prisoner. A prolific writer and translator, he authored and translated several enduring works of Islamic literature. He died in London on March 21, 2000, survived by his wife Sakina and four children, and is remembered as one of the most consequential builders of Shia communal institutions in the West.