MOHAMMAD AKRAM KHAN

Fitjri Audria R.
4.42.16.0.11

Mohammad Akram Khan  was born was a Bangladeshi journalist, politician and Islamic scholar. He is the founder of first Bengali newspaper The Azad.

Akram Khan was born in Hakimpur of District of 24 Parganas of Bengal Presidency, British India (present West Bengal) in 1868. He did not have European/British education but he was a student of Calcutta Madrasah (present Aliah University). He entered the journalism profession at a very young age before getting involved in Politics. Early in his career, he worked at newspapers the Ahl-i-Hadith and the Mohammadi Akhbar. Between 1908 to 1921, he worked as the editor of the Mohammadi and the Al-Islam. He published the Zamana and the Sebak between 1920 and 1922. Sebak was banned and Akram Khan was arrested for supporting the Non-cooperation and the Swadeshi Movements through his anti-government editorials.

In October 1936, Akram published the revolutionary newspaper The Azad, the only Bengali daily of that time which contributed greatly to generate support for the Muslim League in Bengal.

Before joining politics, while as a student of Aliah University he generated a Movement in favour of Teaching all subjects in Bangla. He of course got it done as of till today. Akram Khan was one of the founding members of the Muslim League in 1906. He was involved in the Khilafat and Non-cooperation Movement from 1918 to 1924. He was elected secretary of the All India Khilafat Committee at the conference held at Ahsan Manzil in Dhaka in 1920, which was attended by other eminent Khilafatist leaders like Abul Kalam Azad,Maniruzzaman Islamabadi and Mujibur Rahman. Akram was responsible for collecting funds for the Turkey Khilafat. During 1920-1923, he organised public meetings in different parts of Bengal to propagate the cause of the Khilafat and the Non-cooperation movements. As a believer in Hindu-Muslim amity, Akram Khan supported Chitta Ranjan Das's Swaraj Party in Kolkata in 1922, and also the Bengal pact in 1923. But due to the communal riots of 1926-1927 and other contemporary political developments, Akram Khan lost his faith in Indian nationalist politics and left both the Swaraj Party and Congress. From 1929 to 1935 he was deeply involved in Praja or peasant politics. However, he left peasant politics in 1936 and became an activist of the Muslim League. He was a member of the central working committee of the League until 1947. After the partition of India (1947) he opted for East Bengal and settled in Dhaka.He was the President of Muslim League (East Pakistan) till he retired from Politics on 1960.

From his book “what is wrong with islamic economics?”. He said that the direction of research in Islamic economics has shifted away from Islamic Economics to Islamic Finance”. He contends that despite efforts, the discipline is devoid of theories of prosperity and misery, income and wealth distribution, economic development, macroeconomics etc. Moreover, its terminology and phraseology are not standardized, creating fuzziness and imprecision in the discipline. In short, he states that Islamic economics as a discipline has achieved nothing notable. In his words “Islamic economics is rephrasing of conventional economics with a flavor of the Islamic Sharīʿah . Peeling off the layers, leave the literature on Islamic economics more or less similar to conventional economics has presented”.