Muhsini, Ayatullah Shaykh Mohammad Asif (1935-)

Born in Kandahar, Mohammad Asif Muhsini studied in Najaf in Iraq and was accorded the highest position of the religious hierarchy (ayatullah) of the Shi’ite denomination of Islam. He is the author of twenty books on moral, social, and religious subjects, particularly the Shi’a jurisprudence (Ja’fari) of Islam in the Dari language. Muhsini set up his resistance group, the Islamic Revolutionary Movement, in 1978 and has followers among the Shi’as in Kandahar as well as Kabul. His followers played a conspicuous role in the uprising in Kabul in 1980. Unlike many Shi’as, Muhsini follows the Iran-based ayatullah of the Shi’a denomination only in religious affairs, not in secular affairs: hence the expulsion of his organization from Iran and his willingness to cooperate with the Afghan Sunni resistance organizations in Peshawar (N. Shahabzada, personal communication, San Diego, 1993).