Quick Facts
Biography
Dr. Muhammad Umer Chapra (born in Mumbai, India 1933) is a Saudi Arabian economist. As of November 1999, he serves as Advisor at the Islamic Research and Training Institute (IRTI) of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Prior to this position, he worked at the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA), Riyadh, for nearly 35 years, as Economic Advisor and then Senior Economic Advisor. He has also taught as Assistant and Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin (Platteville), the University of Kentucky (Lexington), as Senior Economist and Associate Editor of the Pakistan Development Review at the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, and as Reader (Associate Professor) at the Central Institute of Islamic Research (Pakistan).
He has lectured widely at a number of universities and professional institutes in different countries around the world, including the Harvard Law School, Loughborough University, UK, the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, the London School of Economics, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, the University of Malaga, Spain, and Kyoto University, Japan. He is on the editorial board of a number of professional journals and has acted as referee for a number of others, including the Economic Journal of the Royal Economic Society, UK, the Journal of Socio-Economics and the Thunderbird International Business Review.
Awards
Chapra has received a number of awards for his academic contributions, including:
1. The Islamic Development Bank Award for Islamic Economics (1989).
2. The prestigious King Faisal International Prize for Islamic Studies (1989).
3. The IOP (Institute of Overseas Pakistanis) gold medal by the President of Pakistan for services to Islam and Islamic Economics at the First IOP Convention in Islamabad (1995).
4. The COMCEC 30th Anniversary Academic Award by the President of Turkey "for his outstanding academic studies in Islamic Economics and Finance" in Istanbul (2014).
5. Ranked by the ISLAMICA 500 among the Top 50 Global Leaders who make the Islamic Economy in 2015.