Saudi channel to cover Haj in Persian

Saudi Arabia has launched Persian-language television broadcasts on the Haj, the information minister said on Sunday, following tensions with Iran over the annual pilgrimage.

Minister of information and culture Adel al-Turaifi said the 24-hour satellite channel would cover Haj rituals and prayers from the Grand Mosque in Mecca.

“The channel aims to broadcast the message of the Haj, the eternal meanings of Islam and to show what is being provided by the kingdom” during the pilgrimage, the Saudi Press Agency quoted Mr Turaifi as saying.

It targets “Persian-language speakers, whose number is estimated at 130 million all over the world,” he said.

Persian, also know as Farsi, is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

In the days leading to the 2016 Haj, which began on Saturday in western Saudi Arabia, Tehran renewed criticism of the kingdom’s handling of the annual rites and of a deadly stampede in 2015.

The accusations prompted verbal retaliation from Riyadh and the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council of which Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia is the most powerful member.

Shia Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the “cursed, evil family” of Saudi royals does not deserve to manage Islam’s holiest sites, while the top Saudi cleric Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh said Iranians “are not Muslims”.

For the first time in nearly three decades, 64,000 pilgrims from Iran are not participating in the Haj, after the regional rivals failed to agree on security and logistics.