This Is What It’s Really Like to Be Racially Profiled for Wearing a Headscarf

Lindsay Lohan claims that she was “racially profiled” for wearing a headscarf at London’s Heathrow Airport. Talking to Piers Morgan on Tuesday morning, the 30-year-old former child star, who grew up in Long Island, N.Y., said that she was wearing a headscarf out of respect for the women of Turkey, which was where she had been traveling before her arrival in the United Kingdom.

The actress, who has been volunteering with Syrian refugees in Turkey when she’s not sitting front row at New York Fashion Week, told the controversial talk show host that after being stopped by an airport employee and told to remove her headscarf, Lohan showed her passport; when the employee saw that the woman she questioned was the Lindsay Lohan, she apologized — but told her she still needed to keep her headscarf off.

“And I did, it’s OK. But what scared me was in that moment — how would another woman who doesn’t feel comfortable taking off her headscarf feel?” Lohan said on Good Morning Britain.

Indeed, what Lohan describes is something experienced by a countless number of women who cover their heads, every day, in all parts of the world. (Lohan is not a practicing Muslim, though she has spoken of regularly reading the Quran.)

And there have been countless stories recently of girls and women worldwide being told they could not wear their headscarves, also known as hijabs, or facing discrimination as a result of their choosing to wear a headscarf:

In the United States especially, many Muslim women are sharing stories of facing even greater discrimination in the wake of the election and inauguration of President Trump:

With hate crimes against American Muslims at an all-time high since 9/11, if there’s one thing to take away from Lindsay Lohan’s own brush with discrimination, it’s that discrimination is real — and the effects on those subjected to discrimination for simply practicing their religion are devastating.

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