Yusuf Motala

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Shaykhul-Hadith Hazrat Maulana Yusuf Motala Sahib (b. 1946) is one of the senior disciples of the late Shaykhul-Hadith Hazrat Maulana Muhammad Zakaria Sahib rahmatullahi alai and an Indian Muslim Islamic scholar.

Yusuf Motala Sahib was born in 1946 at the village of Naroli, district of Surat, Gujarat as the second son and youngest child to Amina Desai Motala and her first husband, Suleman Motala. He has one elder brother, Maulana Abdur Rahim Motala who is two years elder than him and currently lives between Zambia and Toronto, Ontario. At a young age, his parents divorced and he, his brother, and his mother moved in with his maternal grandparents. When he was six and his brother eight, in 1952, his aunt, Hawa Desai Bhorat passed away in South Africa during the childbirth of her eleventh child, Shabeer Cassim Bhorat. She and her husband had immigrated to South Africa many years earlier looking for a better living. Abdur Rahim and Yusuf's uncle-by-marriage was then left a widower in South Africa with nobody to help him raise his children. Their grandfather then sent their mother to South Africa to marry her brother-in-law as his second wife and help him raise his children. His mother agreed and then immigrated to South Africa. From then, he was raised by his grandparents. He began his studies at Jamea Hussainia in Rander, Gujarat and eventually graduated from the renowned Islamic university, Mazaahirul Uloom in Saharanpur. In 1968, upon the instructions of his Shaykh, he immigrated to England to set up the first Islamic university in the United Kingdom, Darul Uloom Al-Arabiyyah Al-Islamiyyah in Holcombe, Bury, Lancashire in 1973. At present, he is the founder and patron of numerous Islamic institutes throughout the world. His students, who number hundreds, are spread across the globe occupied in the service of deen in varying capacities. In short, a remarkable individual of rare intellectual and practical talents.