How Islamic is Islamic Banking? Developing the Falah Scoring

Queries are often raised regarding the extent to which Islamic banks are Islamic. As the biggest Muslim country in the world, it is interesting to investigate that many employees of Indonesian Islamic banks have resigned because they no longer view their banks as Islamic. Many of them join 90-thousand-strong anti-riba movement known as the xBank community. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate the Islamicity of Islamic banks from an internal perspective using mission drift and happiness theory. The study uses a mixed-method approach comprising of the Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) technique to analyse questionnaire data, and the qualitative data originated from focused group discussions to confirm the findings from the primary data. The study concludes that Islamic banks have become un-Islamic due to the demands of regulatory policies that force them to compete with conventional banks. Consequently, the research identified a minor mission drift of only around 7%. However, the Muslim society responded very sensitively, making big noises. Thus, the findings become evidence for a need of a falah scoring development necessary to maintain the Islamicity of Islamic banking.