This dissertation examines whether Islamic banks demonstrated relative robustness over conventional banks during the financial crisis. The author conducts an empirical analysis using a sample of 397 banks from 13 countries over 23 years. The dissertation includes sections on banking theory, Islamic banking principles, literature review, data collection and methodology. The data section describes filtering the initial bank panel down to the final sample of a balanced number of similarly sized Islamic and conventional banks from 13 countries to facilitate comparison.