This Awesome 15-Year-Old Girl Is Lobbying For A Hijab Emoji

With today’s iOS update, Apple have introduced a number of new emojis, including single parent families, female police and construction workers, and even a rainbow flag. But according to Rayouf Alhumedh, one important symbol is still missing. The 15-year-old high school student, who was born in Saudi Arabia but now lives in Berlin, is the lead author on a new proposal calling for the creation of a hijab emoji, one that she says would represent and acknowledge “the massive amount of women that wear the headscarf today.”

Here Are All The Things To Celebrate And Complain About From Today’s iOS 10 Update

According to Alhumedh’s proposal, which will be submitted to the nonprofit Unicode Consortium which oversees the creation of emojis, “roughly 550 million Muslim women on this earth pride themselves on wearing the hijab…[and yet] not a single space on the keyboard is reserved for them.”

Shane Warne, on the other hand, is getting an entire line of emojis. So yeah, let that sink in for a moment.

Excited to say #WarnieMojis will launch in the next few weeks. Head to https://t.co/SdVOXdrsrB #naughtyandnice pic.twitter.com/hgpqViTIG1

— Shane Warne (@ShaneWarne) September 11, 2016

Alhumedh’s proposal suggests that a hijab emoji could prove enormously popular in the Muslim world, citing countries such as Indonesia, which has a Muslim population of more than 200 million people, and Egypt, where as many of 90 per cent of women wear headscarves.

“Due to the ever-growing Muslim population around the world, this emoji will only increase in demand,” reads the proposal. “The addition of the hijab emoji will prove to be a step forward in tolerance and diversity.”

Moreover, the proposal argues that the emoji would not just be for Muslims, pointing out that headscarves are also commonly worn “in Eastern Orthodox Christian communities in Russia and Romania, as well as some conservative Jewish communities,” and that they can also by women who simply like the way they look.

Alhumedh discussed her proposal in detail during a Reddit AMA, expertly shutting down the haters in the process. “There will be people opposed to it because they believe that it will represent ‘oppression’ or some other crap,” she said. “But that is nothing to worry about, as this emoji will serve as a representation for millions across the globe.”

“Might seem baffling, but when I wear the headscarf I actually feel liberated because I’m in control of what I want to cover,” she said.

You can read Alhumedh’s full proposal here.

–

Feature image by Rayouf Alhumedh.