Photo by Bethany Clarke/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — On Thursday, Twitter announced that it will “help people celebrate” the Islamic holiday of Ramadan with icons that will appear whenever a user uses the hashtags #Ramadan and #Eid.
Over the past two weeks, Twitter has utilized similar icons for the World Cup, tiny flags that appear within a tweet when a user uses the hashtag of a competing team’s abbreviation. After determining that Twitter users sent over 74 million tweets about Ramadan in 2013, the company opted to create similar icons for the Islamic holiday.
Users who use the hashtags in either English or Arabic will see either a crescent moon or a piece of calligraphy appear within their message.
Ramadan represents the ninth month of Islam’s lunar calendar. Ramadan is believed to be the month in which the Quran was revealed. During Ramadan, which begins with the new crescent moon, observant Muslims refrain from food, water and sexual relations between dawn and dusk.
In addition to the icons, Twitter announced that it has partnered with Arabic news channel Al Arabiya to help users find out what time each day they can break their fast. A user who tweets at the @AlArabiya account with the hashtag #iftar and the name of their city with a hashtag in front of it will receive a response with the time the fast ends for the day. The same process will work for the beginning of fast, using the hashtag #imsak in place of #iftar.
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