NARATHIWAT: The manager of Smanmit Witthaya School in Yi-ngo district in this southernmost border province has asked members of the public and those who love museum hopping to donate money to help finish construction of a Museum of Islamic Cutural Heritage and Al-Quran Learning Centre.
Lutfi Haji Samae, also the president of the museum, said construction started five years ago under a budget of 164 million baht. The building is nearly 80% complete but work was halted late last year because the school ran out of money.
“We still need around 30 million baht to carry out our work,” Mr Lutfi said. “The amount of money will be spent for interior design and decoration.
“Once the museum building is completed, the museum will be the first of its kind in the Southeast Asian region and it will become a magnet to draw visitors especially from Muslim countries in the Middle East and this region to visit.”
Mr Lutfi said he initiated the project as he had seen a large number of torn copies of the Quran left unattended at houses of Muslim people in the deep South.
Some of them had been written several hundred years ago, he said.
“These torn copies of the Quran are precious and highly valuable in my eyes. They deserve to be preserved for young generations to study and learn about Islamic way of life and its culture,” he said.
Mr Lutfi was speaking to Class XI students on a peace-building course from the King Prajadhipok’s Institute during a recent visit to the museum of the school to learn about Islamic culture and heritage.
Mr Lutfi said he had sought help from local officials from the Fine Arts Department of the Ministry of Culture until the school received a budget from the ministry to construct the museum.
He said the National Archives of Thailand of the ministry has taken a good care of the project.
Over the past five years it has assigned experts in book restoration to help train a group of Muslim teachers at the school to undertake restoration of damaged and antique books so they were able to fix the torn copies of the Quran.
Mr Lutfi said that while waiting for the museum to be complete, all the archived books, Islamic documents, copies of the Quran and other precious heritage of Islam are being stored on the first floor of the main school building.read more
School bid to raise funds for museum
