Seven-Year Efforts to Translate Quran into Rwandan Language
Rwanda is a country in Central Africa. Located a few degrees south of the Equator, Rwanda is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Kinyarwanda, Rwandan or Rwanda, officially known as Ikinyarwanda, is a Bantu language and the national language of Rwanda.
Chikal Harun was born in 1969 in Rwanda’s Gitamada region. He started attending Quran reading classes at the age of four and two years later joined the Nizamiya School in his hometown.
In 1979, an Islamic center was jointly founded in Rwanda’s capital of Kigali by Libya and the United Arab Emirates. Harun left the Nizamiya School to continue his studies at the Islamic center, whose teachers were from Sudan and Libya and where the lessons were offered in French.
Harun memorized half of the Quran at the center and stated preaching Islam.
In 1997, he went to Kenya to attend an Islamic school there. He met Shia scholar Sheikh Abdullah Nassir there and was tasked with the school to talk to him about the reason for his conversion of Shia Islam. In these conversations, Harun got interested in Shia Islam and soon became a Shia.
After the outbreak of civil war in Rwanda, Harun went to Tanzania and there met an Iranian cleric named Hassan Mohajer, with whose help he continued his preaching activities.
Given the spread of Islam in Rwanda and people’s interest in the religion, there was a need for translating Islamic books into the Rwandan language. Hence, Harun embarked on translating such books.
He rendered a large number of Islamic books into Rwandan language. They included “History of Muhammad (PBUH) and Caliphs”, “Shia and Quran”, “Shia and Hadith”, Shia and Sahaba (companions of Prophet)”, and “Asl Ash-Shia”.
In 2010, when he was studying in Iran, Harun began translating the Quran into Rwandan and it took him 7 years to complete the translation.
