Social Responsibility by Islamic Banks in Palestine
Dr. Sharif M. Abu Karsh

Abstract
This study aims at exploring the idea of the Islamic banks in Palestine, wherein it focuses on the social role of these banks towards the community. As well, it explains different aspects of the Islamic banking sector, for instance, it clarifies the features of the offered services and the dedicated social responsibility by this eminent sector. In this study, the customers' perspectives regarding Islamic banks are considered as a corner stone for conducting this study. Hence, it develops a questionnaire that aims at exploring the reasons of preferring dealing with Islamic banks in Palestine. Hence, Palestine in particular is given wide focus regarding this issue so as to recognize why Islamic banking is dominating, whereas the economy in general is unstable in terms of growth and performance. Meanwhile, this paper states that the Islamic banks play a significant role in the society growth in terms of market share as well as their international widespread. These elements altogether lead to attract Non- Muslims' banking transactions, too. As well, Islamic banks provide different services, wherein these services depend ultimately on the 'Islamic Sharia' in their functions. Socially, the Islamic banks are oriented toward the achievement of different financial goals set by banks as well as their customers. Thereupon, the idea that social responsibility by the Islamic banks is considered as basic element is because they consider their customers as the most important asset a business can have. Hence, different reasons might be behind the customers' attraction to the Islamic banks in Palestine. These reasons include the employee's satisfaction with working in these banks because of applying 'Islamic Sharia' in their operations and transactions. However, the social responsibility by Islamic banks is put under scrutiny in order to examine the developed benchmark, and whether it is suitable to use by other Islamic banks in other countries. One of the most important findings about the social responsibility shows that banks tend to reveal few details regarding some activities that might harm their reputation like education, health, relief, cultural services, economic services, and environmental issues. Thus, a little information is found about how they deal with insolvent.

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