This paper presents a narrative review of arguments made by researchers regarding the applicability of western and Japanese quality management systems by non-profit Islamic institutions. This review approach was employed after undertaking a literature search for selected articles based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The focus of narrative reviews in this study is to identify common themes across researches regarding non-profit Islamic institutions and quality management systems in Malaysia that can then be used to identify commonalities and critical differences among included documents. Following electronic searches of Scopus and Google Scholar sites, nine studies on quality management systems related to non-profit Islamic institutions were identified and subjected to a detailed narrative literature review. Findings reveal that the quality management systems discussed by researchers vary and there are researchers who rejected the idea of implementing western and Japanese quality management systems and instead implemented the Islamic Quality Management system, which was developed in Malaysia. This study intends to contribute to the quality of management and non-profit institution management literature with the proposition of adopting quality management systems by the management of non-profit Islamic institutions.