Ma`rifat Eqtesadi

This article examines the performance of Islamic banks in comparison to conventional banks in the growth of bank facilities during the COVID-19 crisis. For this purpose, data from 95 banks from 10 countries in the MENA region were collected and analyzed from a database. The data is in panel form and the multivariate regression model in Stata and Eviews software was used for analysis. The results show that the interaction between the dummy variable of Islamic banks and crisis conditions is not significant. This finding shows that Islamic banks did not perform differently from conventional banks during the Covid-19 crisis. Given the ethical nature of Islamic banking, it was expected that the performance of Islamic banks would be significantly different from that of traditional banks in this regard. The following reasons can be given for this result: 1. Due to the outbreak of Corona and the people getting caught up in illness and economic problems, ethical issues have also been considered in traditional banks, and therefore no difference in performance has been observed in these two types of banks; 2. During this period, due to the granting of facilities and even grants by governments to people and companies and their transfer through banks equally or even more through state-owned banks, which are mainly traditional; Therefore, the advantage of Islamic banking has been overshadowed by these conditions.