A flight to liquidity and safety is not unusual when uncertainty rises and markets are disturbed, but the breadth and persistence of this turmoil and its spread into money markets made it a substantial threat to financial and economic stability.
New entrants to the industry have merely tended to copy the strategies they see being successfully pursued by their more established rivals. As a result, a very high percentage of Islamic banks have a strategy that is heavily weighted towards real estate and asset finance. The downturn in global economic conditions will provide these business models with a stern test.