Ayatollah Ashrafi Esfahani was the Friday prayer leader of Kermanshah. He made great efforts to promote unity between Shia and Sunni Muslims and to establish peace and harmony in the region. To achieve this unity, he frequently traveled to cities such as Paveh, Javanrud, and Ravansar. He organized numerous seminars with Sunni and Shia Friday prayer leaders in the provincial capital and Sunni-populated cities. Ayatollah Ashrafi Esfahani warmly embraced Sunni clerics and even placed the Sunni clerics' office next to the Imam Khomeini Seminary at Ayatollah Boroujerdi Mosque. In various gatherings, he would often cite verses and hadiths that emphasized the importance of unity.
Ayatollah Ashrafi Esfahani was repeatedly targeted by terrorist attacks. The first attempt on his life occurred in 1980 when a sonic bomb exploded at his home. In the second attempt by the Mojahedin-e Khalq terroris group (MEK) in 1981, while heading to Boroujerdi Mosque for the noon prayer, three armed assailants fired at him from a car, but the bullets did not hit him. As the attackers fled, they threw a grenade at him, which caused him no harm, but several innocent people were killed or injured. The third terrorist attempt by the MEK took place on Friday, October 15, 1982. After the start of the first sermon, an infiltrator from the MEK terrorist group carried out a suicide attack by embracing Ayatollah Ashrafi Esfahani and detonating a grenade.