Selected characteristics of Islamic banking in context of real sphere development

Abstract

The objective of this study is to analyse the selected characteristics of Islamic banking in the context of real sphere development. It is hypothesised that Islamic economic principles could be applied to some extent to Western banking. To this end, selected features of Islamic and Western banking were analysed for their impact on the real sphere, including analysis of Islamic banks’ assets in the years 2006–2015 and the transposition of these data to assets of ten top commercial banks in the world. A literature review related to the functioning of Islamic banking, content analysis and deduction method was used to achieve this purpose. The authors, as a result of the research carried out, contradict the hypothesis indicating that it is impossible to directly compare Islamic banking to conventional banking, as the scope of services provided, system assumptions and, above all, their complexity, determines a different approach to their management and monitoring. As a result of scientific research, the authors of the paper contributed to opening new research areas in the field of Islamic banking.   Keywords: Shari’ah laws, financial crisis, real sphere development, bank profitability.