Al-Arabiya

U.S. media giant Warner Bros. have defended themselves in light of a recent complaint that two Muslim women were asked to move from the audience of talk show “The Real” due to their wearing of headscarves.

According to a complaint against the studio, the two women were requested by officials to move out of the front row as it was against studio policy to have audience members wearing hijabs in shot.

“Warner Bros. has no legal justification for removing the hijab-wearing women from the camera’s view,” a spokesperson for a U.S. based Muslim civil advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations who lodged the complaint said.

“No studio should maintain such a discriminatory policy that prohibits people wearing religious head coverings from being seen in its studio audiences. It’s especially baffling that this particular show would want to hide their visibly-Muslim viewers, when the show purports to cater to a wide-ranging audience with its diverse cast,” read the statement.

Warner Bros. responded in a statement to media site HollywoodLife.com that their “policy is to welcome everyone and anyone into our studio audience. ‘The Real’ is a show that was created to represent and celebrate diversity. We take this inquiry seriously and are looking into the matter.”