Purpose This paper aims to systematically review the existing studies for Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) standards which include different tracks of researches and then identify the gaps to propose opportunities for future research. Design/methodology/approach By adopting a systematic literature review approach, 46 papers that were published between 2000 and 2020 from 23 journals concerned with AAOIFI were selected for review and analysis. Findings The authors combine electronic searches to identify relevant studies using keywords such as “AAOIFI” or and “Islamic standards.” In light of the existing studies’ limitations, this paper derives and summarizes five leading future research tracks: identifies the research gaps in AAOIFI and then suggests that AAOIFI still requires more empirical analyses; identifies the alternative analytical methods as meta-analysis; identifies additional measurements for macro and microeconomics factors; identifies recent tracks as corresponding to Covid-19 pandemic; and future studies should consider the role of central banks and positive criticism for AAOIFI. Practical implications This analysis address the literature gaps on measuring compliance, determinants and consequences of AAOIFI adoption as this study serves as a guide for the researchers, regulators and Islamic financial institutions in research associated with this area. The findings would support AAOIFI, regulators and related authorities across jurisdictions with suggestions on improving the current AAOIFI practices. Originality/value This literature review is a historical record and guidance for researchers who seek to examine and explore several questions about AAOIFI. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that applies systematic literature review over AAOIFI research field.

This study examines the interrelationship between cash holdings and financial performance by firstly investigating whether the existence of an optimal cash level maximizes financial performance and secondly measuring the impacts of financial performance over the optimal level of cash holdings. This study uses a sample of 400 financial institutions in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region across 18 different countries over 15 years (2003–2017). The results support the hypothesis about the positive impact of cash holdings over the financial performance as well a positive influence for financial performance over the existence of an optimum level of cash holding. The analysis supports this association through a robustness test by controlling the culture variables based on Hofstede's model as well as through using different alternative measures for cash holdings. This study is one of the original empirical studies that measure the interrelationship between holding cash and the level of financial performance through the banking sector in the MENA context.