KUANTAN: About four tonnes of the al-Quran and Islamic prayer books which were damaged in floods in Pahang early this year, have been disposed off.

Termin al-Quran Rehabilitation Centre operator Mohamad Zakaria said the centre began to receive the copies at the end of January from the district Islamic Religious offices.

Mohamad, who runs the centre with his friend Zainal Idris, said disposing of al-Quran takes up to two days and needs to be carried out carefully to preserve the sacredness of the holy book.

"Overall, we received about six tonnes of al-Quran, prayer and Yassin books, which were damaged in floods, from Temerloh, Jerantut, and Lipis."We carried out the disposal process every day starting last January, where all the copies were dried before burning them. Only 200 kilogrammes of the holy books will be burned in one session, which needs about 48 hours," he told Bernama.

On the disposal process, he said the holy books would be opened and arranged in a way for them to be dried before putting them into an incinerator to burn the books.

"Usually, we start the burning from around 8 am to 5 pm and leave the copies in the incinerator until they turn into ashes," said Temin, who has been running the centre since 2014.

According to him, after the combustion, the freezing process is done by putting the ashes into a ceramic mould for about 10 to 15 minutes before being brought to the Kampung Termin cemetery in Jerantut for burial.

-- BERNAMA