When Saudi businessman Saleh Abdullah Kamel backed the launch of a new satellite channel in 1998, he named it for a single Arabic word carrying enormous religious weight: iqra, read, tradition holds to be the first word the angel Gabriel spoke to Muhammad in the cave at Hira, the opening command of the Quranic revelation itself. IQRA TV, broadcast in Arabic as Iqraa, began transmitting from Rome on October 21, 1998, under founding director general Abdul Qader Tash, becoming the first satellite channel built specifically to serve Muslim audiences with religious and cultural programming.
The channel's stated mission set it apart from the harder edged religious broadcasting some viewers might have expected. Its own founding purpose, later documented in independent media studies research, was to present what it called the moderate and tolerant line of Islam, explicitly positioning itself against extremist interpretations circulating in other media at the time. Programming was built to reflect that mission in its mix rather than only in its rhetoric: religious instruction made up roughly a third of the schedule, balanced against Islamic and general cultural programming, drama serials and children's content.
The approach worked quickly by the channel's own account and by outside assessment alike. Within six months of its 1998 launch, researchers studying the channel found it had achieved most of its founding objectives and had been widely welcomed by viewers across the Arab world and in Europe, where a growing Muslim diaspora audience had few, if any, comparable options built specifically for them.