California: World-famous Islamic economics scholar and thinker Dr. Muhammad Najatullah Siddiqui (91) passed away. The Indian-origin expert, one of the world's leading scholars, died in California in the US.
He was awarded the King Faisal Award by the Saudi government in 1982 for Islamic studies and the Shah Waliullah Award in 2002 for his distinguished service. He was a member of the Central Consultative Committee of Indian Jamaat-e-Islami for a long time.
Born in 1931 in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, he was educated at Aligarh Muslim University, Rampur Religious School, and Azamgarh Jamiatul Falah. He started his service as an Economics Professor at Aligarh University. Later, he moved to Saudi Arabia and became a professor of economics at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah. Then he moved to America and settled there. Siddiqui continued his teaching career at the Universities of California and Los Angeles and at the Research and Training Department of the Islamic Development Bank in Jeddah.
He has written many books and hundreds of articles in English and Urdu languages. He has also been the editor of several many academic journals in the world. He served as a guide for hundreds of researchers.
Siddiqui's theories and research papers on the interest-free financial system have become part of the curriculum in many schools around the world. An expert in the domain of Islamic banking, his treatises in the area have been extensively used as the seminal thought for several Islamic banks that came up in Muslim countries and similar ventures in some non-Muslim countries.
Written in 1973, his work 'Interest-Free Banking' sold 27 editions in three languages by 2000. His works have been translated into Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Indonesian, Thai, and Malay.