I wear a head scarf. When I read the story about Sen. Barack Obama's volunteers telling two Muslim women they couldn't sit where they would be on camera ("A little trouble with the image," Pruden on Politics, Nation, Friday), I was not surprised at all. As I sat examining the news in a coffee shop in Harvard Square, I thought to myself, "How many times have I been the object of discrimination as a woman in a headscarf in the post-Sept. 11 United States?"

Here is a tough pill to swallow: Religious and ethnic discrimination continues to exist in the United States and is often ignored. Addressing it should be consistent and necessary, not just when it is politically useful.

My community of Muslim Americans suffers all sorts of stereotypes. Anti-Muslim comments have become as commonplace as ever for many Muslims of America - the conflation of radicals and fundamentalists with many of us mosque-goers, the oppression of women who wear headscarves, the inherent violence of observers of Islam. And these are to name a few.

Mr. Obama's volunteers were only acting on the hard reality we Muslim Americans often experience. [Link]