Publishers of Quran want hologram ruling dropped

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian publishers of the Quran have urged the Home Ministry to scrap a new requirement for security holograms to be affixed on each copy of the Islamic holy book.

Sabariah Abdullah, pro tem president of the Al-Quran Publishers Association of Malaysia said the ruling, which came into effect yesterday, was not an effective way to ensure all copies were genuine and free from errors.

She said the new ruling would only burden smaller publishers with extra costs and could force them to raise prices by up to RM5 per copy.

“Thus, we urge the Government to abolish the hologram requirement altogether,” Sabariah said.

She added that instead of trying to make the Quran as easily and cheaply available as possible, the ruling would make it harder and more expensive to publish the holy book locally.

Locally published Quran are currently priced between RM10 and RM300 per copy depending on size and quality, with more than 500,000 copies produced annually by the association’s 80 members.

Under the new ruling, all publishers must buy the holograms from the ministry’s Quranic text division at RM1 per sticker and bear additional costs of affixing the stickers on each copy of the Quran.

Sabariah said there was no need for a new hologram as each copy was already required to be stamped with a seal of approval from the division, which also vets all imported copies.