The character, Razmi, was wearing a hijab in the campaign (Picture: TfL)

TfL has pulled a controversial children’s road safety campaign that featured a young Muslim girl wearing a hijab.

One of the images in the Children’s Traffic Club campaign showed a child called Razmi, who is around three or four years old, wearing the religious veil as she played with her friend Maylin.

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But it was quickly called out by Muslim women’s organisations for ‘sexualising’ Razmi, because the hijab is usually only worn after a girl hits puberty.

Gina Khan, an Islamic women’s rights activist, told the Times that the campaign was ‘sexualising a four-year-old girl – it is as simple as that’.




‘The reason a female is covered is so men don’t look at her,’ she added. ‘How can you integrate in society if you have a four-year-old girl wearing a hijab?’

The campaign encourages road safety among London children (Picture: TfL)

Shaista Gohir, chair of Muslim Women’s Network UK, also accused the campaign of reinforcing tired stereotypes about what Muslim women and girls look like.

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‘It is frustrating to see that every time a Muslim girl or women needs to be represented, she has to be shown covering her head,’ she told Sky News.

‘Why reinforce stereotypes, especially when it comes to children? Most Muslim four-year-old girls do not wear the hijab – those who want to wear it usually do so at puberty with some only adopting it due to parental and peer pressure.’

The character Razmi appeared on the TfL website, and in a children’s book that was given out to nurseries in London.

The £2million campaign was launched in 2015 by then-mayor Boris Johnson. A spokesperson for Sadiq Khan said he had not approved the books.

A TfL spokesperson said: ‘We apologise for any offence caused by this content and we will not use these designs in future. The Children’s Traffic Club was developed to help reduce casualties on London’s roads by educating pre-school children on basic road safety skills.’