For centuries, the Rohingya people, a Muslim ethnic minority indigenous to Myanmar, have not had access to the Quran in their native language. However, a campaign led by Rohingya Vision has recently raised more than $20,000 toward funding for an audio and video translation of the scripture, making the text much more accessible to the largely illiterate and highly impoverished community.
“It is extremely sad to say that for over 14 centuries, the Rohingya are deprived of understanding the holy revelation, the Quran, in their own Rohingya language,” said Muhammad Noor, CEO of Rohingya Vision, a news outlet specializing in documenting Rohingya communities in Myanmar and the diaspora.
Past attempts at translating the Quran into Rohingya have largely been unsuccessful and Rohingya have had to access the scripture in the original Arabic or use Urdu translations when available. Like its people, the language has largely been relegated to the fringes of Myanmar society. The government of Myanmar does not use the term Rohingya to describe the people or language, instead opting to refer to them as “Bengali,” in part due to linguistic similarities between the Rohingya language and Bengali (unlike Burmese, which is the official language of Myanmar, Rohingya and Bengali are both Indo-European languages).