The only Sunni Mosque of Shiraz, founded by Dr. Mozaffarian from Shiraz. He was a Physician who converted to orthodox Islam after having travelled to the southern parts and coastal areas of Iran (which are predominantly Persian and Sunni but unknown to many Iranian Shias, except some holiday destination like Kish etc.) and built the first Sunni Mosque of Shiraz (after the Safavids destroyed every single Sunni Mosque) by converting his house into a Mosque when the authorities refused to give him the permission to buy land and build a Sunni Mosque from scratch for the Sunni community of Shiraz (which is the largest minority of Shiraz, yet to this day they have only a single Mosque). Dr. Mozaffarian was arrested and executed in 1991 on the false charge spying for the United States. Under immense pressure by the large Sunni population of Shiraz and southern Iran in general, the Mosque has been eventually built, however as a form of humiliation the regime prevented the buidling of minarets and even loudspeakers for the Adhan.

Shiraz, like most of modern day Iran was Sunni. As a matter of fact, Shirazi was a renowned stronghold of Sunnism in Islamic history, beacons of knowledge emerged from there such as Imam Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi (known as “The Shaykh of the Shafi’is of his time”!) 476H Scholars from Cairo and Baghdad travelled to the Persian lands of Shiraz to seek knowledge. It eventually became a stronghold of the Shafi’is (still most Persians south of Shiraz, who fled the Safavid onslaught are majority Sunni Shafi’i) right until just 500 years ago i.e. before the onslaught of the Safavids the hit the ethnic Persians of Iran the most (who ironically admire the Turkic Safavids the most, religious Shia and non-religious ones alike). Today Shirazi is one of the few Persian Shia cities with a native Sunni minority, the Safavids either destroyed all Sunnis Mosques or removed any sign of Sunnism (such as calligraphies with the names of the four rightly caliphs) from Shiraz’s landscpape. Many Persian Shirazi Muslims did not submit and refused to accept Shi’ism, they either fled (further to the south, were many Persian Sunnis of Shirazi descendant still live in Iran) or were slaughtered on spot.

A portrait of the flaming accursed looking Zindiq, Ni’matullah al-Jaza’iri