Abu Ahmad Abdul Hafiz was born on 2 June 1900, to a Bengali Muslim family in Sonarpara, Sylhet.
His father was Khan Bahadur Abdur Rahim, the son of Munshi Abdul Qadir of Rainagar Mahalla.
His father was a graduate of Calcutta University and later joined Assam Civil Service as a deputy magistrate.
[3] His activist career began with his involvement in the Khilafat Movement during his youth which called for the restoration of the Ottoman Caliphate.
His teachers included Abdullah Suhrawardy, Moulvi Abdul Karim, Sir Abdur Rahim, his father's classmate A. K. Fazlul Huq and Ashutosh Mukherjee.
For a long time, Abdul Hafiz was a member of the managing committee for Sylhet Shahi Eidgah and Manik Pir Hill.
In 1929, he established the Bakhtiar Bibi Girls School in Rainagar and assisted Zamindar Brajendra Narayan Chaudhury in founding Sylhet Women's College.
[6] This latter role allowed him to develop close relations with Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, Syama Prasad Mukherjee, Sir Azizul Haque and Bidhan Chandra Roy.
[7] Among his efforts was inviting Sahul Usmani from Bihar to give a pro-partition speech to the masses in Sylhet, as well as assisting the Radcliffe Boundary Commission.
[8] Abdul Hafiz disassociated himself from the Muslim League in 1952, and began to dedicated his life instead to education and social welfare.