Mujib Abdur Rahman
Update: The hijab emoji has now been approved by Unicode and you can expect to see it in 2017.
When we are messaging our friends or posting on social media, we often use emojis to represent our emotions. Often, no words are needed and an emoji is sufficient to let another person know what we are talking about.
Recently we’ve seen some catered for Muslim users such as these:
But one teenager wants to take a step further and develop a ‘Hijab’ emoji.
15-year-old Rayouf Alhumedhi who is originally from Saudi Arabia but lives in Germany was frustrated at not finding an emoji that represented her so she wrote to Apple. However that led to nowhere. Eventually, she found out about The Unicode Consortium – a nonprofit that reviews and develops standard modern character sets used in computers and mobile devices. With a bit of help, she sent her proposal over to the consortium and if approved, the Hijab emoji could be available by 2017.
Rayouf wants the Hijab to be recognised in a world where there are a lot of misconceptions, hatred and violence. She told the BBC,
“In this day in age people want to be acknowledged and recognised” “The tech world is big and emojis are everywhere. After adding the different skin tones on emojis people felt represented”.
Rayouf Alhumedhi
With millions of Muslim women wearing Hijab, this could be a breakthrough to helping more people understand the importance of Hijab.
“It’s different when you see yourself on a keyboard, being represented” Rayouf said.
We hope to see these emojis appearing on our computers and mobile devices soon inshaAllah!
