The Silent Script and Spoken Word: A Systematic Review of Tourist Managerial Policy and Guide Competency in Islamic Heritage Sites

There has always been a struggle of balancing the sanctity of religious places with the growing need for tourism at Islamic heritage sites all over the world. This paper investigates how the phenomenon of a “silent script” of managerial policy and the “spoken word” of guide competency intersect to balance Islam and heritage tourism. Based on a PRISMA-informed search conducted in Scopus and Web of Science on research articles published between 2000 and 2025, the review synthesizes 58 empirical and conceptual contributions. Three interrelated themes are highlighted by the analysis: the central role of spiritually-informed stewardship in shaping management policy, the contribution of interpretive skill to expanding visitor engagement, and the critical function of feedback loops that link policy development to on-the-ground guiding practices. Based upon these understandings, the Integrated Spiritual–Stewardship Model is built, which combines spiritual leadership principles with heritage interpretation theory to explain how unilateral management-guide transmission and bidirectional exchanges between the two groups can support both sacred values maintenance and visitor experience quality. The results are of direct policy relevance to site managers and authorities: criteria for spiritual leadership should be introduced into management plans; guide training programmes organized around interpretive and spiritual facilitation skills should be developed; structured feedback mechanisms between front-line guides and decision-makers should be institutionalized to support sustainable, ethically-based governance of Islamic heritage destinations.