ISLAMABAD: Prominent Pakistani economist Dr. Muhammad Umer Chapra, a towering figure in Islamic finance who helped build and shape the Saudi banking system, passed away this week, his family said on Sunday.
Born in 1933, Dr. Chapra was one of the first Pakistani nationals to move to the Kingdom in 1965. He is credited with helping transform the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) during its early stages.
“My father passed away yesterday [Saturday] around Asr,” Dr. Chapra’s son Anas Chapra told Arab News.
A statement from the family said Dr. Chapra’s funeral prayers will be held on Sunday at the Masjid Al-Haram in Makkah after Fajr prayers. The statement said he would be buried at the Al Ma’la Cemetery in the city.
Dr. Chapra served as an adviser at the Islamic Research and Training Institute of the Islamic Development Bank in Jeddah, and also won the King Faisal International Prize for Islamic Studies in 1990.
He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Karachi University in 1956 and a Ph.D. at the Minnesota University in 1961. Dr. Chapra also served as a research assistant at Minnesota and associate professor of economics at the Wisconsin and Kentucky universities.
In an interview with Arab News in 2019, Dr. Chapra said he arrived in Saudi Arabia during the reign of King Faisal and initially worked with Finance Minister Sheikh Mohammed Abalkhail.
“He was very good,” Dr. Chapra said. “I saw him a number of times during the preparation of the monetary policy of Saudi Arabia and economic development and so on.”
Dr. Chapra praised the former Saudi finance minister, saying he was “prepared to listen to advice.”
“And even King Faisal was very good in this respect,” he said. “He was willing to listen to advice and also act upon it.”
In recognition of his services to the Kingdom, Saudi Arabia granted him citizenship.
According to the official website of the King Faisal Prize (KFP), Dr. Chapra made seminal contributions to Islamic economics and finance over the past several decades.
The KFP, he published around 15 books and monographs as well as over 90 articles and book reviews.
It described his book “Towards a Just Monetary System” as one of Dr. Chapra’s groundbreaking contributions.
“Reviewing that book in the Bulletin of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, Professor Wilson of the University of Durham described it as ‘the most lucid presentation yet of the monetary theory of Islam,’” the KFP said.
Chapra’s books were translated into many languages and are taught in universities worldwide, it added.
