Woman With Headscarf Emoji

A person wearing a headscarf, most commonly understood as the hijab. Emojipedia notes it is displayed as a woman in most vendor designs, though the emoji's official name was revised from "Woman with Headscarf" to the more neutral "Person with Headscarf" to acknowledge the diversity of head-covering practices beyond Islamic dress.

What makes 🧕 unusual in the emoji canon is how it got here. It was proposed in 2016 by Rayouf Alhumedhi, a 15-year-old Saudi Arabian student living in Berlin, who noticed her friends in a WhatsApp group chat all had emojis that looked like them while she didn't. Alhumedhi first emailed Apple, heard nothing back, then learned about Unicode's formal proposal process through a Mashable Snapchat story. She drafted a seven-page proposal with usage examples, history, and design guidance, which was picked up by Jennifer 8. Lee and Emojination, and approved for Emoji 5.0 (2017).

In texting, 🧕 is an identity emoji first and a fashion emoji second. Hijabi creators use it in bios, Muslim women use it for Eid and Ramadan posts, and it appears in modesty-fashion content, Islamic advocacy posts, and diversity discussions. It also sees frequent use by allies flagging solidarity or amplifying Muslim voices during hijab-ban debates, which recur across France, India, Iran, and elsewhere.

🧕 is one of the most emotionally loaded emojis in the people set. Hijabi influencers use it constantly: #HijabTutorial has millions of TikTok views, and creators like Hafsah Dabiri and Rowi Singh use the emoji as part of their signature styling. The global modest-fashion market was projected to reach $402 billion by 2024, and 🧕 is the default shorthand for that entire world.

Ramadan and Eid drive the biggest spikes. Instagram and TikTok fill with 🧕 during the final 10 nights of Ramadan (Laylatul Qadr) and across both Eids. Muslim creators use it in outfit reveals, iftar posts, and taraweeh prayer content. Brand accounts, especially from halal beauty and modest fashion lines, lean on it heavily during these windows.

The emoji also surfaces during political controversy. France's 2004 law banning headscarves in public schools, the 2011 full-face-veil ban, India's 2022 Karnataka hijab ban blocking students from college, and Iran's 2022 Mahsa Amini protests all produced waves of 🧕 usage on social platforms, often paired with 🇮🇷 or 💔 or ✊. It's not uncommon for the same emoji to be used the same week by women who wear the hijab for faith and by women protesting being forced to wear it. The garment is not politically neutral, and neither is the emoji.

Before the emoji, there was a 15-year-old in Berlin and a group chat. Rayouf Alhumedhi was born in Saudi Arabia, moved to Germany as a child, and started wearing the hijab at 13. In a WhatsApp group with her friends, she watched everyone pick emojis that matched them. She had nothing.

Alhumedhi first emailed Apple's customer help in 2016. No response. She eventually found a Mashable Snapchat explainer on how Unicode actually approves new emojis, which led her to post on Reddit. Her post was seen by Jennifer 8. Lee, vice-chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee and co-founder of Emojination, an organization built around making emoji more inclusive. Lee invited Alhumedhi to co-author a formal proposal.

The result was a seven-page document submitted to Unicode in September 2016. It included: expected global use (550 million to 1.8 billion Muslim women worldwide, of whom a large fraction wear the hijab), compatibility with existing skin-tone modifiers, rendering guidance, and cultural context. The proposal was approved within months. Emoji 5.0 shipped in 2017, and 🧕 joined the keyboard.

The rollout was not quiet. Alhumedhi received significant online harassment, including accusations that the emoji celebrated oppression of women. The same conversation happened inside Muslim communities, with some women saying the emoji made them more visible in a welcome way and others arguing it reduced Muslim identity to a garment. Both camps kept using it.

In 2021, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum added 🧕 to its permanent collection as an example of design for inclusion. The emoji that started as a 15-year-old's WhatsApp frustration became a museum artifact in five years.

1. 610Islam begins with the revelation of the Qur'an. Later verses (Surah An-Nur 24:31, Surah Al-Ahzab 33:59) reference modest dress for women.↗
2. 1979Iranian Revolution institutes mandatory hijab, ending a century of modernizing dress reforms.
3. 2004France bans conspicuous religious symbols, including hijabs, in public schools.↗
4. 2013World Hijab Day is launched on February 1 by Nazma Khan in Bronx, NY, to encourage non-Muslim women to try wearing a hijab for a day.↗
5. 2015Alhumedhi starts wearing the hijab. A year later she's in a WhatsApp chat realizing no emoji matches her.
6. 2016Rayouf Alhumedhi submits her seven-page hijab emoji proposal to Unicode in September.↗
7. 2017Emoji 5.0 ships with 🧕 PERSON WITH HEADSCARF approved as U+1F9D5.↗
8. 2017Halima Aden becomes the first hijab-wearing model at New York Fashion Week.
9. 2021Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, adds 🧕 to its permanent collection as an example of inclusive design.↗
10. 2022Mahsa Amini's death in Iran after being arrested by morality police triggers the Woman, Life, Freedom protests. The emoji is reclaimed by protesters on both sides of the debate.

The hijab is not one garment, and 🧕 represents a flattened version of several.

In Saudi Arabia and Iran, the hijab has historically been legally mandated in public. In Iran since 1979, and across Saudi Arabia until modernizing reforms in recent years. In both contexts the emoji carries weight beyond style.

In Indonesia and Malaysia, the hijab (called tudung or jilbab locally) is cultural default for most Muslim women but not legally required. Hijab fashion there is a huge commercial industry.

In Turkey, headscarves were banned in universities and government jobs for much of the 20th century; bans were lifted only in 2013. The emoji's political meaning in Turkish contexts is distinct from its meaning in Riyadh or Tehran.

In France, Belgium, and several other European countries, hijabs are restricted in public schools, civil service, or both. Use of 🧕 in French-language Muslim posts often carries explicit political weight because wearing one in the classroom is illegal.

In the US and UK, the hijab is legally protected in most contexts and is an everyday identity marker. Usage trends closer to fashion and religious practice than to political defiance.

🧕 also increasingly stands in for other head-covering traditions it was not originally designed for: Coptic Christian tarha, Jewish tichel, Hindu ghunghat in some regional contexts. Most users default to reading it as Muslim, but the "Person with Headscarf" rename leaves more room than it used to.

• •The 🧕 emoji was proposed by Rayouf Alhumedhi, a 15-year-old Saudi-born girl living in Berlin, who first tried emailing Apple before learning Unicode's formal proposal process from a Mashable Snapchat story.
• •Her seven-page Unicode proposal included global demographic estimates, historical context, and rendering guidance. It was approved within months.
• •The emoji is in the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian's permanent collection as an example of design for inclusion, an honor few emojis share.
• •The Qur'an uses the word "hijab" to mean a curtain or spatial barrier, not a piece of clothing. The headscarf word in Arabic is khimar. Modern English uses "hijab" for the garment itself.
• •The global modest fashion market was projected to reach about $402 billion by 2024, partly fueled by hijabi TikTok creators with millions of followers.
• •World Hijab Day is celebrated on February 1. It was founded in 2013 by Nazma Khan in Bronx, NY, to invite non-Muslim women to try wearing a hijab for a day as a solidarity and empathy practice.
• •Halima Aden, a Somali-American model, was the first hijab-wearing model at New York Fashion Week in 2017. She later stepped back from fashion to refocus on her faith practice.
• •The emoji faced a small wave of Twitter backlash when it was approved, with some users calling it a celebration of oppression. Alhumedhi was doxxed and harassed. She kept going; the emoji shipped anyway.

• •Many users assume 🧕 is the "Muslim woman" emoji universally. Not all Muslim women wear a hijab, and the emoji doesn't claim to speak for them all. It represents those who do.
• •The hijab is not a symbol of oppression by default. In many countries it's a chosen faith practice; in a few it's mandated; in others it's banned. The same emoji carries all three meanings depending on who's posting.
• •🧕 isn't just for Arab women. The largest Muslim populations are in Indonesia, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. South and Southeast Asian hijabis use the emoji heavily.
• •It isn't only for women, technically. The emoji name is Person with Headscarf, and some non-Muslim women (Orthodox Christian, Jewish, Hindu) use it for their own head-covering practices.

• •Halima Aden became the first hijab-wearing model to walk New York Fashion Week in 2017, signed with IMG Models, and appeared on the cover of British Vogue. She later stepped back from fashion, saying she felt pressured to wear her hijab in ways that didn't align with her religious practice.
• •Ibtihaj Muhammad became the first American Olympian to compete in a hijab at the 2016 Rio Games, winning a bronze medal in team sabre fencing. Mattel released a Barbie modeled on her in 2017.
• •The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum added 🧕 to its permanent collection in 2021, recognizing the emoji itself as a design artifact for inclusion.
• •The 2022 death of Mahsa Amini in Iran, after her arrest for allegedly violating hijab rules, sparked the global "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement. Iranian women used 🧕 ironically and defiantly in protest content.

• •Base codepoint: U+1F9D5U+1F9D5. Base emoji supports Fitzpatrick skin-tone modifiers.
• •Gender variants: U+1F9D5 U+200D U+2640 U+FE0FU+1F9D5 U+200D U+2640 U+FE0F (woman) and U+1F9D5 U+200D U+2642 U+FE0FU+1F9D5 U+200D U+2642 U+FE0F (man).
• •Shortcode :woman_with_headscarf::woman_with_headscarf: on Slack and GitHub. Not all platforms auto-complete the gender-neutral base.
• •Be deliberate when using this emoji in UI. It's a high-signal identity marker; avoid decorative use unrelated to Muslim or headscarf-wearing audiences.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.