\n\tISLAMABAD: 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.<\/p>\n
\n\tBorn 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cMy father passed away yesterday [Saturday] around Asr,\u201d Dr. Chapra\u2019s son Anas Chapra told Arab News.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tA statement from the family said Dr. Chapra\u2019s 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\u2019la Cemetery in the city.<\/p>\n
\n\tDr. 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.<\/p>\n
\n\tHe received his bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn 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.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cHe was very good,\u201d Dr. Chapra said. \u201cI saw him a number of times during the preparation of the monetary policy of Saudi Arabia and economic development and so on.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tDr. Chapra praised the former Saudi finance minister, saying he was \u201cprepared to listen to advice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cAnd even King Faisal was very good in this respect,\u201d he said. \u201cHe was willing to listen to advice and also act upon it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIn recognition of his services to the Kingdom, Saudi Arabia granted him citizenship.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tAccording 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.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe KFP, he published around 15 books and monographs as well as over 90 articles and book reviews.<\/p>\n
\n\tIt described his book \u201cTowards a Just Monetary System\u201d as one of Dr. Chapra\u2019s groundbreaking contributions.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cReviewing that book in the Bulletin of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, Professor Wilson of the University of Durham described it as \u2018the most lucid presentation yet of the monetary theory of Islam,\u2019\u201d the KFP said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tChapra\u2019s books were translated into many languages and are taught in universities worldwide, it added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ISLAMABAD: Prominent Pakistani economist Dr. Muhammad Umer Chapra, a towering figure in Islamic finance who helped build and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-638828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}