Indicators for Superficial Transactions at the Interest-free Banking in Iran (Case Study: Granted Facilities of Tejarat Banks of Mashhad)

Given the lapse of nearly three decades of enforcement of interest-free banking law in Iran and emergence broad developments in the banking system، scientific and empirical researches are necessary to adapting performance of interest-free banking to banking regulations and Shari`a rules and principles. The prohibition of usury، not squander of wealth in vanity، no loss-no hurt، prevention of deceive and non-superficial transactions are some of these rules. This paper deals with identifying and introducing superficial transactions in order to evaluating performance of non-usury banking system. This issue is of great importance since the performance of non-usury banking in granting facilities has resulted in superficial contracts between two transacting parts (bank staff and facility demanders) in three latter decades. Thus، introducing quantitative indicators seems necessary to cope banking system activities with Shari`a criteria and principles. The research method relying library sources is descriptive and content analysis، in which indicators for superficial transactions are estimated using survey study. The hypothesis of this paper is that، more than half of bank transactions at branches of Tejarat Bank of Mashhad are superficial. The statistical population consists of all contracts among branches of Tejarat Bank of Mashhad and bank customers during 2009-2010. Using cluster sampling، a sample with 451 customers، who get bank facilities، was selected. Although the principle of non-interest banking operations fully comply with the holy Shari`a، but the results of the estimation of indicators for superficial transactions indicate that more than half of bank transactions at branches of Tejarat Bank of Mashhad are superficial.