Born on March 31, 1939 in Madras, India, Mahboob Khan earned a BS degree from Madras University. In 1966 he immigrated to the United States to complete his MS and PhD degrees in solid-state physics at the University of Colorado/Boulder. During his years in Boulder, Khan was an early founder of the Muslim Students Association of the U.S. and Canada (MSA). He subsequently served as an MSA Vice President and as the organization’s West Zone Representative.

Khan moved from Colorado to southern California in 1975 to accept an electrical engineering job with the (now-defunct) manufacturing conglomerate Rockwell International. In California, he founded the Islamic Society of Orange County (ISOC), a mosque that eventually came to include also an Islamic center and an elementary school.

Khan served as the President of ISOC until 1980, when he moved to San Jose to take a position with Fairchild Semiconductor, Inc.  Khan’s successor as the head of ISOC was Muzammil Siddiqi, a fellow Indian expatriate.

In the early 1980s, Khan was a founding member of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).

In 1983 Khan was a founding member of the Santa Clara, California-based Muslim Community Association (MCA), where he subsequently served as both a Board of Trustees member and a Board Chairman. Proudly touting its affiliation with ISNA, MCA consisted of two mosques, a cultural center, and an elementary school.

The San Francisco Chronicle has reported that at least twice during Khan’s tenure as MCA’s Board Chairman in the 1990s, one of its two mosques — Masjid An-Noor — hosted fundraisers on behalf of the Muslim terror organization known as Islamic Jihad. The initial solicitation for these fundraisers was made by Ayman al-Zawahiri, who would later go on to become a leading figure with al Qaeda.

In December 1992, Omar Ahmad— the Founding Chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and a leader in Khan’s former ISOC mosque — hosted Omar Abdel Rahman, who served as Osama bin Laden‘s spiritual mentor and played a major role in introducing Islamic terrorism into America, at his (Ahmad’s) apartment in Santa Clara, California. Rahman at that time was in Santa Clara for an ISOC fundraiser, where he exhorted his fellow Muslims to recognize their obligation to wage violent jihad against those who had “united themselves against Muslims.” “If you are not going to the jihad, then you are neglecting the rules of Allah,” Rahman explained.

In addition to his affiliations with the MSA, ISOC, and MCA, Khan in 1998 founded the Santa Clara-based American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice, whose chairman would later defend the Taliban even after the 9/11 atrocities which that organization had played a major role in facilitating.

Khan also served a stint on the board of the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT).

Khan died of a heart attack in Santa Clara on April 16, 1999. His widow, Malika Khan, was a founding member (with her late husband) of the Muslim Community Association (MCA) and served as a board member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations‘ California chapter. Of the couple’s five children, the most politically noteworthy is Suhail Khan. The other four children included two additional sons (Salman and Sajid) and two daughters (Sumiya and Sana).