Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

contains a number of characters that represent various

cultural Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...

political Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...

, and

religious Religion is a range of social- cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural ...

symbols. Most, but not all, of these symbols are in the Miscellaneous Symbols block. The majority of them are treated as graphic symbols that are not characters. Exceptions to this include characters in certain writing systems that are also in use as political or religious symbols, such as 卐 (U+5350), the

swastika The swastika (卐 or 卍, ) is a symbol used in various Eurasian religions and cultures, as well as a few Indigenous peoples of Africa, African and Indigenous peoples of the Americas, American cultures. In the Western world, it is widely rec ...

encoded as a

Chinese character Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only on ...

(although it is also encoded as a religious symbol at U+0FD5); or ॐ (U+0950), the Om symbol which is, strictly speaking, a

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...

ligature. A special case is ﷲ (U+FDF2), which is a special ligature of Arabic script used only for writing of the word ''

Allah Allah ( ; , ) is an Arabic term for God, specifically the God in Abrahamic religions, God of Abraham. Outside of the Middle East, it is principally associated with God in Islam, Islam (in which it is also considered the proper name), althoug ...

''. This ligature is in the Arabic Presentation Forms-A block, which was only encoded for compatibility and is not recommended for use in regular Arabic text. Unicode defines the semantics of a character by its character identity and its ''normative properties'', one of these being the character's ''general category'', given as a two-letter code (e.g. ''Lu'' for "uppercase letter"). Characters that fall in the "political or religious" category are given the "general category" ''So'', which is the catch-all category for "Symbol, other", i.e. anything considered a "symbol" which does not fall in any of the three other categories of ''Sm'' (mathematical symbols), ''Sc'' (currency symbols) or ''Sk'' (phonetic modifier symbols, i.e. IPA signs not considered letters).

Armenian block

The Unicode chart for the Armenian block notes two religious symbols: :

Dingbats block

The Dingbats block also contains some symbols with political/religious connotations: :

Geometric Shapes Extended

Other weights of the Greek cross are in Geometric Shapes Extended. :

Enclosed Ideographic Supplement block

The Unicode chart for the Enclosed Ideographic Supplement block notes several symbols used for Chinese folk religion: :

Miscellaneous Symbols block

The Unicode chart for the Miscellaneous Symbols block has a section explicitly labelled "Religious and political symbols": : Elsewhere in the block is: : The emoji variants have U+FE0F after the symbol.

Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block

The Unicode chart for the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block notes many religious symbols: : Ostensibly religious symbols are, however, not limited to this section, as the same chart has another short section of two characters labelled "Syriac cross symbols", with the explanatory gloss "These symbols are used in liturgical texts of Syriac-speaking churches". Another short section of two symbols is headed "Medical and healing symbols", including U+2624 ☤ Caduceus (cf. U+1F750 🝐 "alchemical symbol for caduceus"), U+2695 ⚕ Staff of Aesculapius, and U+2625 ☥ Ankh, all of which originate in polytheistic religious traditions.

Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A block

The Unicode chart for the Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A block notes one religious symbol": :

Tibetan block

The Unicode chart for the Tibetan block notes several religious symbols and a political symbol: :

Soyombo block

The Soyombo symbol is a special character in the Soyombo alphabet devised for the

Mongolian language Mongolian is the Prestige (sociolinguistics), principal language of the Mongolic languages, Mongolic language family that originated in the Mongolian Plateau. It is spoken by ethnic Mongols and other closely related Mongolic peoples who are nati ...

. It appears in several flags of Mongolia. Three forms appear in the Soyombo block. :

References

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