Dr. Mohammad Omar Farooq is an associate professor with the Department of Economics and Finance at University of Bahrain (UOB). He also teaches for the Department of Islamic Banking at UOB. He has been involved in leading role in quality assurance and accreditation in various institutions in Bahrain, the latest of which was the instrumental contribution he had in UOB’s AACSB accreditation process, leading to the accreditation in 2016. Before joining UOB, he served as the Head of the Centre for Islamic Finance at Bahrain Institute of Banking and Finance (BIBF). Before that, he has been the Acting Dean of the Faculty of Business and Financial Sciences at Royal University for Women in Bahrain. Prior to that, he had spent 20 years in the USA, teaching economics and finance, the last thirteen of which were at Upper Iowa University. Dr. Farooq received PhD in economics from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 1988. He was a post-doctoral research fellow at University of California, Berkeley during 1988-89. He has been an external member of the Rating Committee of International Islamic Rating Agency during 2012-2015. He is a member of the Technical Working Group of AAOIFI for the development of Standards and Guidelines on Ethics. Among his research interests are economic development, history of economic thought, and Islamic economics/finance/banking. His research has focused particularly on Islamic economics/banking/finance, especially with emphasis on the ways and mechanisms to interface Islamic finance with development, poverty alleviation and real economy. His works also include Shari’ah, hadith and Islamic jurisprudence. His works have been published in many refereed journals. Among his publications is a book Toward Our Reformation: From Legalism to Value-oriented Islamic Law and Jurisprudence by IIIT. He has been a prolific contributor to a broad range of Islamic and other issues. Inspired by Islam, he consistently writes from a self-critical, common-ground- seeking, bridge-building, humanity-oriented perspective. Social Science Research Network (SSRN) Author Archive: https://papers.ssrn.com/author=1039977

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