Khawaja Sira Pride Flag
Cultural Gender Pride Flag · 2021 to the present
The transgender flag's five stripes carrying a black crescent and eight-pointed star at the hoist, for the khawaja sira community of Pakistan. Published on the Pride-Flags DeviantArt account on 2 March 2021, naming no designer and giving no statement of meaning. [1] No physical, organisational or event use of this design has been located in the sources used for this entry. [2]
Key facts
- Designer
- Unknown
- Earliest located publication
- Documented online circulation
- 2021 to the present
- Aspect Ratio
- 5:3 · measured from the source file
- Stripes
- 5
Also known as
- Khawaja Sira Flag
Status Proposed
Archive categories Gender Identity Pride Flags · Cultural Gender Pride Flags · Regional and Language-Specific Pride Flags
Overview
The khawaja sira flag places a black crescent and an eight-pointed star on the transgender pride flag's five stripes. Its earliest located publication is the Pride-Flags DeviantArt account, 2 March 2021, which names no designer and gives no statement of meaning. [1]
Identity & Context
Khawaja sira is the Urdu term used in Pakistan for the community known in India as hijra, where the word hijra is generally considered derogatory; the LGBTQIA+ Wiki glosses khawaja sira as the Urdu equivalent for transgender. Pakistan recognised hijras as a third gender in 2009 and India in 1994. [2] Erika Alm and Lena Martinsson, writing on the rainbow flag's circulation among Pakistani LGBTQ activists, argue that it “can function as a way to mobilize an imagined transnational community of belonging” but “can also enable homonationalism and transnational middle class formations that exclude groups of people, for example illiterates and people perceived of as traditional, such as Khwaja Siras”. [3] Their argument is about the rainbow flag, not about this design.
Creators
Creator unknown
No identification located
No designer has been identified. The earliest located publication is the Pride-Flags DeviantArt account's posting of 2 March 2021, which names no designer. [1] The account is the earliest located publisher and renderer of the artwork, not a documented designer of it. The posting's description text is the LGBTA Fandom Wiki's Hijra article reproduced in full, and the only flag it credits is the hijra flag, which it attributes to the Tumblr user Samira (Divinehijra) on or before 1 September 2018. It says nothing about who made the khawaja sira design. [1] The LGBTQIA+ Wiki states only that “a khawaja sira flag was created on or before 2021 by an unknown individual”, citing that same posting. [2] The copy the wikis circulate was uploaded by AgentBot, an import bot, not by a creator. [4] The wiki names a designer for the neighbouring hijra flag, the Tumblr user Samira (Divinehijra), and none for this one, so the absence is the record's rather than the page's habit. [2] Its wording about this flag has also changed: until the article was rewritten on 31 August 2025 it carried only an image caption, "Khawaja sira flag by an unknown person", with no date; the rewrite changed "person" to "individual" and added the sentence quoted above. [2] [5]
Contribute information about who designed this flag.
Attribution
- Primary Designer
- Unknown
Origin
Where the flag was made is not recorded. The earliest located publication is a DeviantArt posting, which fixes a platform rather than a place. [1]
Dates & Chronology
- Earliest located publication
- Documented online circulation
- 2021 to the present
- Creation Bounds
- The Pride-Flags account published the flag on DeviantArt on 2 March 2021. [1] That is a publication date, not a date of use: it records when the design was posted, not when it was drawn and not when anyone flew, carried, printed or wore it. When the design was made is not documented, and the LGBTQIA+ Wiki puts it no more precisely than “on or before 2021”, citing the same posting. [2] A copy entered the LGBTQIA+ Wiki on 24 January 2022. [4]
Documented circulation runs through flag wikis. A 417 by 250 pixel copy was uploaded to the LGBTQIA+ Wiki by AgentBot on 24 January 2022, imported from the LGBTA Fandom Wiki, and is the copy that wiki's Hijra article displays. [4] No physical, organisational or event use of the design has been located in the sources used for this entry. [2]
The crescent and star are Islamic iconography, and the khawaja sira community in Pakistan is largely Muslim. No source read states the designer's intention in combining them with the transgender flag; reading the iconography is visual description, not documented meaning.
Lineage
The five stripes are the transgender pride flag's, carried unchanged beneath the crescent and star, and measure the same fifths in the source file. The relationship is visible in the artwork; no designer statement documents it, so no formal parentage is asserted. [1]
Colors & Symbolism
| Colour | Hex | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Blue | #5BCEFA | Measured from the 5000 by 3000 pixel source file, where it fills 37.17% of the image as a flat value; the transgender flag's blue. [1] |
| Pink | #F5A9B8 | Measured from the source file, 33.36% as a flat value; the transgender flag's pink. [1] |
| White | #FFFFFF | Measured from the source file, 14.78% as a flat value. [1] |
| Black | #000000 | Measured from the source file, 14.53% as a flat value; the crescent and star. [1] |
This flag has no official digital palette. Color values shown are approximate.
No statement of meaning has been located. Neither the DeviantArt posting nor the wiki article that carries the design publishes a reading of its colours or charges. [1] [2] The stripes are the transgender flag's and the crescent and eight-pointed star are Islamic iconography; what the designer intended by the combination is undocumented.
Values measured from the source file, not issued by a creator: no palette specification has been located. The four fills account for 99.84% of the image and the remainder is edge antialiasing, so the values are exact rather than approximate. They are the transgender pride flag's published values, carried over unchanged. [1]
Design
- Aspect Ratio
- 5:3 · measured from the source file
- Orientation
- horizontal
- Stripe Count
- 5
- Layout
- horizontal stripes with charges at the hoist
- Stripes (Top → Bottom)
- blue, pink, white, pink, blue
- Additional Symbols
- a large black crescent at the hoist, a black eight-pointed star with disc-tipped rays set in the crescent's opening
Measured from the 5000 by 3000 pixel source file. Five equal stripes of 600 pixels each. The crescent spans x 173 to 1981 and y 350 to 2650, centred on the flag's horizontal midline, its opening facing the fly and its horns tapering toward it. The star's bounding box is exactly square at 1478 by 1478 pixels, centred at x 1643.5 and on the same midline, with eight rays each ending in a disc. [1]
Image Archive
Original publication, 2021
Later circulating copies
Discourse & Debates
No creator has come forward and no account of the design's making has been published, so there is no first-hand statement of who made it or why. [1] [2]
Footnotes & Citations
Sources and footnotes 5 sources
- 1. Social media Khawaja Sira. Pride-Flags. DeviantArt (2021-03-02). Accessed 2026-08-16
The earliest located publication and the source artifact, read at full resolution: 5000 by 3000 pixels. Names no designer and gives no meaning for this design. Its description text reproduces the LGBTA Fandom Wiki's Hijra article, whose only flag credit is for the hijra flag.
- 2. Encyclopedias & Reference Hijra. LGBTQIA+ Wiki contributors. LGBTQIA+ Wiki. Accessed 2026-08-16 · Archived version
States that “A khawaja sira flag was created on or before 2021 by an unknown individual”, citing the DeviantArt posting, and captions the image “Khawaja sira flag by an unknown individual”. Read through the Internet Archive; the live site refuses requests from this network. Page last edited 31 August 2025. The wiki carries a standing notice that many of its pages “come from a time when resourcing was not required”.
- 3. Academic The Rainbow Flag as Friction: Transnational, Imagined Communities of Belonging among Pakistani LGBTQ Activists. Erika Alm and Lena Martinsson. Culture Unbound, volume 8, issue 3, pages 218 to 239 (2016). Accessed 2026-08-16
Cited for the authors' argument about the rainbow flag's circulation among Pakistani LGBTQ activists, which is their own and concerns the rainbow flag rather than this design.
- 4. Image file page File:Khawaja sira flag.jpg. LGBTQIA+ Wiki (2022-01-24). Accessed 2026-08-16 · Archived version
The file record for the circulating copy: 417 by 250 pixels, 10 KB, uploaded 00:12 on 24 January 2022 by AgentBot with the comment “Imported from LGBTA Fandom Wiki”, with no higher resolution available. Read through the Internet Archive.
- 5. Encyclopedias & Reference Hijra, before the 31 August 2025 rewrite. LGBTQIA+ Wiki contributors. LGBTQIA+ Wiki (2025-07-16). Accessed 2026-08-16 · Archived version
The article as it stood before the rewrite, captured 29 July 2025 at oldid 253856. Its only words on this flag are the image caption “Khawaja sira flag by an unknown person”, with no date and no meaning; the sentence dating the design to 2021 is not present. Cited so the change in the wiki's wording is on the record.
Image Sources
- Credit: Pride-Flags (DeviantArt), earliest located publication
- Credit: LGBTQIA+ Wiki, imported from the LGBTA Fandom Wiki by AgentBot
- The source artifact: the file published on the Pride-Flags DeviantArt account on 2 March 2021, 5000 by 3000 pixels. The posting names no designer and gives no meanings. [1] · Credit: Pride-Flags · DeviantArt
- The copy the wikis circulate, 417 by 250 pixels. AgentBot uploaded it to the LGBTQIA+ Wiki on 24 January 2022 with the comment “Imported from LGBTA Fandom Wiki”, and the wiki's Hijra article displays it. The wiki records no higher resolution. [4] · Credit: Uploaded by AgentBot, imported from the LGBTA Fandom Wiki · LGBTQIA+ Wiki · CC BY-SA 4.0 applies to the wiki's page content