Are you familiar with emojis? A new set of emojis representing headscarf-wearing Muslim women was proposed by a 15-year-old Arab girl.
“The fact that there wasn’t an emoji to represent me and the millions of other hijabi women across the world was baffling to me,” the teen, Rayouf Alhumedhi, told.
Rayouf, who lives in Berlin, proposed her idea to The Unicode Consortium, the non-profit corporation that reviews and develops new emojis.
And she received an immediate reply from Jennifer 8. Lee, a member of the Unicode emoji subcommittee, describing Rayouf’s idea as “a very strong, thoughtful and well-formed proposal.”
Rayouf also gained support from an internet bigwig.
Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, hosted an online discussion on Tuesday, September 13, where Rayouf talked about her idea.
According to Rayouf, some sees her idea as “unnecessary” and a “symbol of oppression,” but most actually welcomed the thought.
“People in general want to strive for diversity,” she further tells CNN.
Rayouf will present her proposal in person to Emojicon and the Unicode Technical Committee in November, and with the way things are right now, a hijabi emoji would be on phones by 2017.
