Special issue on the impact of COVID‐19 pandemic on Islamic financial markets and institutions

Though the Covid19 pandemic began as a health crisis, its tentacles have touched almost every aspect of our lives, generating research interest in, among other things, how financial markets and institutions across the world are coping with its impacts. The Special Issue presents papers that examine the effects of the pandemic with a particular reference to the global Islamic financial system. Islamic financial markets and institutions are different from conventional financial markets and institutions in that the former adheres to the rule of Shariah (Islamic law) prohibiting institutions from charging interests on a loan, while a conventional institution relies on interests to survive and grow (Hassan & Muneeza, 2022). There are two types of Islamic finance: Islamic commercial finance and Islamic social finance. The former generates profit in a Shariahcompliant manner, while the latter assists each other without an eye to making a profit (Hassan et al., 2021; 2022). In the next section, I briefly review the papers contained in this special issue and end with concluding remarks.