Muhammad Munir Ahmed served in the State Bank of Pakistan—the central bank of the country—for more than three decades. After completing his Master’s degree in Economics from the University of the Punjab, Pakistan, he joined the Research Department of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) in 1976 as a Research Officer. He remained associated with research and economic analysis for about two decades and worked in different positions and various policy departments relating to Monetary Policy, Balance of Payments, Financial Markets, Debt Management, and the Training Department of SBP. Thereafter, he switched over to the Operations side and worked in a number of offices of the central bank in various cities of Pakistan for more than a decade.
While working in the Operations side, his main responsibility was to monitor the implementation of Monetary Policy by commercial banks and coordination with banks and other Development Finance Institutions for the purpose. Working on both sides of the wall provided him an opportunity to have an in-depth study of working of the financial sector both at home and abroad.
Since school days, Muhammad Munir Ahmed had a great liking for reading, particularly history and literature. Working in the Research Department ignited passion for knowing the unknown, in particular economic systems experienced by mankind. In 2007, he got published his article about the national poet of Pakistan—Allama Iqbal—where he portrayed him as a Management Scholar by comparing the poet-philosopher with leading management gurus of the Western world. This article was published in the journal of Institute of Management Science. In the same year, another article on Islamic Management ideology was published in the journal of Institute of Bankers in Pakistan (IBP) with an interesting name: “The 9th Habit: For Effectiveness in the 21st Century”.
While being Chief Manager, State Bank of Pakistan Lahore, he read his paper “Islamic Economic System and the Current Financial Crisis of Capitalism” at the 3rd IABRC 2010 arranged by International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan. Later on, this was published in the IBP Journal, April–June 2011. In 2012, he presented another research paper on “Islamic Version of Narrow Banking” in the International Conference on Islamic Banking arranged by Riphah University, Islamabad, Pakistan, at NIBAF, January 2012.
After retiring from SBP in 2011, he got registered with the Institute of Banking and Business Learning (IBBL) for training young bankers in different parts of the country. Along with working as President of IBBL, he assumed two new roles: teaching banking to university students and doing economic journalism in the shape of writing articles on Islamic/Conventional Banking and Finance (2014–2017) in the weekly Economic Business Review (EBR) of the Daily Dawn—the leading English newspaper of the country. Even after retirement, he could not abandon the study of Western banking and finance—a necessary requirement for working in the Policy departments of a central bank. Rather, it increased manifold after the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–08 as could be seen from its frequent mention in the book. All these activities ultimately unfolded themselves in the shape of the book, 7th Century Madina Economics: The First Economic System of the Mankind.
