Lindsay Lohan knows what it’s like to be a minority in America. The 30-year-old Caucasian actress recently converted to Islam. She says she was wearing a headscarf in accordance with her religious faith when she left Turkey in January.
Lohan said she arrived at Heathrow Airport in London, where she took a connecting flight to JFK Airport in New York. President Donald Trump‘s Executive Order banning Muslims traveling from terror-linked countries was in effect.
“I was flying to New York recently and I was wearing a headscarf and I got stopped at the airport and racially profiled. First time in my life,” she told U.K.’s Good Morning Britain on Tuesday, Feb. 12.
“She (security) opened my passport and saw ‘Lindsay Lohan’ and starting immediately apologizing … but then said ‘please take off your headscarf’. I did, I mean it’s OK, but what scared me was, that moment, how would another women who doesn’t feel comfortable taking off her headscarf feel? That was really interesting to me.”
Lohan said the experience was “jarring” and she was freaked out by it.
“It was weird. I’m from New York, I was born and raised there and I was a little intimidated.”
Lohan defended wearing the headscarf in New York, where tensions are still high following the chaotic response to Trump’s order.
“I was doing it because I was leaving Turkey and out of respect for certain countries (traditions) I feel comfortable acting the same way as the other women… that’s just a personal respect issue that I have so I had it on.”
