Unicode has announced the release of 56 new symbols including a bearded man, a sandwich, a woman breastfeeding a baby, a T-rex and of course a lady wearing a hijab.
The new set of emoticons are being included to further diversify the original set and better represent people, characters, items, scenarios.
The inclusion of new emojis were put through a strict process of a formal proposal to the Unicode Consortium, who then decided if the emoji would be approved or not.
Meet the teen behind the potential hijab emoji #emojicon pic.twitter.com/YACnN35SB4
— TRT World (@trtworld) November 12, 2016
The person who had the idea to create the hijab emoji and helped in writing the proposal was, Rayouf Alhumedhi, a 15-year-old high school student from Berlin, Germany. her goal was to introduce the hijab emoji into the world of smartphone conversations.
She stated in her proposal, "Roughly 550 million Muslim women on this earth pride themselves on wearing the hijab. With this enormous number of people,not a single space on the keyboard is reserved for them."
Rubab Rahman from Australia, a fellow supporter of the hijab emoji made a Change.org petition to add a Hijab emoji for Muslims, which gained over 2,300 supporters.
Hijab, breastfeeding and zombie emoji set to make their way to a device near you in 2017 https://t.co/UvDgODSCVZ pic.twitter.com/x1TR3YkJyb
— The Next Web ???????????? (@TheNextWeb) November 12, 2016
A hijab emoji. In a world that is increasingly backwards, there is hope that technology will continue to be progressive. https://t.co/W5ZBo7Rx4K
— Ridha Hassoun ???? (@ridhahassoun) November 11, 2016
Kind of upset that my first thought upon seeing the news of a hijab emoji is, "How are people going to use this to be racist?".
— Max Honoré (@radmax) November 11, 2016
The 56 emojis will are set to be released in mid-2017