Girl wants to enforce headscarf emoji
Rayouf Alhumedhi (15), a student from Berlin, has identified a gap in the emoji set: there is no emoji on cell phones for women wearing a hijab, the Muslim headscarf.
She wants to change this - and is now making headlines around the world. With international supporters, she has sent a proposal to the consortium in the USA that is responsible for such symbols. In an online discussion this week, Rayouf Alhumedhi wrote that the scarf is a liberation for her because it allows her to control what she covers. The application for the new emoji emphasizes how important images are for communication in the digital age. "Around 550 million Muslim women around the world wear the hijab with pride." The male head covering (kufija) is also to get a new emoji. According to the application, Rayouf Alhumedhi comes from Saudi Arabia and has lived in Berlin since 2012. She has been wearing a headscarf since she was 13. Rayouf is very interested in social justice. She had missed a suitable symbol on her smartphone and initially turned to Apple before finding out about the Unicode Consortium responsible. Her supporters include Alexis Ohanian, one of the founders of the online platform Reddit. (SDA)
