Muhamed Pilav was born in Foca in 1907, where he graduated from primary school. Later he completed his studies at the Commerce School in Sarajevo and signed up at the Economic and Commerce College in Zagreb in 1931. He joined the group of anti-Yugoslav students in Zagreb and provided personal security for Mile Budak (a writer and Minister of Education and Religion in the Independent State of Croatia). During the 1930s, Pilav belonged to a branch of Bosnian Muslims who supported Vlatko Maček, who formed the Muslim branch of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS), which during the elections in 1938 opposed the Yugoslav Muslim organization (JMO) run by Mehmed Spaho.

Pilav went into exile in 1934, but returned to Yugoslavia, to Foča, in 1937 because of disagreements with the fascists. After the establishment of the Ustasha authority, he was imprisoned as traitor in the concentration camps of Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška in 1941, from which he fled.

From 1942, he lived in Vienna, Austria. Pilav stayed there until 1946 when he was caught and rendered to Yugoslavia where he was sentenced to five years in prison for collaborating with the fascists. After his imprisonment, Pilav escaped from Yugoslavia in 1953.

Since 1954 he was found among Adil Zulfikarpašić's circle of friends, which is how Pilav became one of the initiators of Bosnian Views (Bosanski pogledi), for which he wrote a single text related to the fate of Bosniaks during the Second World War. Pilav led a humanitarian organization, the Muslim Social Service (Muslimischer Sozialdienst), which operated in Vienna.

He returned to Yugoslavia in 1977 and died in Sarajevo in 1999.