Islam was first introduced to the island nation by a British Ahmadi Muslim of Pakistani descent, Iftikhar A. Ayaz, who works as the British consular representative to Tuvalu Islands.
In 1985, he came to Tuvalu, and in out of office hours, he endeavoured to introduce the Islamic faith to the local population.
With several converts to the faith, Ayaz requested the headquarters of the Community in London to send a missionary to the Islands.
As a result, Hafiz Jibrail, a Ghanaian missionary, who was already based in the South Pacific at the time, arrived in 1989, approximately four years after the introduction of Islam to the nation.
However, in 1991 Hafiz Jibrail had to be transferred to the Kiribati Islands and thus was replaced by Abdul Ghaffar, another Ghanaian missionary to the Community.