IQNA Opens Tajiki as Its 22nd Language
The opening ceremony was held on Sunday with the attendance of Hojat-ol-Islam Mohsen Qomi, deputy international affairs of the office of the Islamic Revolution Leader.
IQNA is the first news agency in Iran to have 22 languages and it aims to increase the international reach of Quranic news. Currently, the foreign languages pages have more visitors than the Farsi page.
The International Quran News Agency believes that news stories related to the Holy Quran can play a unifying role among the Islamic nations and Muslims of the world, just like the Quran itself.
The launch of IQNA languages is based on the studies done by this media outlet as well as the feedback from users and Islamic institutions in other countries.
Tajik is the official language of Tajikistan and is also spoken in parts of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan. According to Britannica, Tajik is spoken by more than 7 million people widely spread throughout Tajikistan and the rest of Central Asia. Tajik is a variety of Persian and is therefore related to other languages in the Iranian language family such as Farsi, Dari and Pashto.
The Tajik of Tajikistan has diverged from Persian as spoken in Afghanistan and Iran due to political borders, geographical isolation, the standardization process and the influence of Russian and neighboring Turkic languages.
Most Tajiks are Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi school, but there are also some Shia Tajiks who follow the Twelve Imams or Ismaili sects. They live peacefully with other ethnic groups and religions in places like Badakhshan, Herat, Balkh, etc.
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