Sydney woman tells off racist in video
A video showing a young Sydney woman defending a Muslim couple from racial abuse on a Sydney train has gone viral on Facebook.
There have been more than 53,000 views of the video that shows Sydneysider Stacey Eden, 23, standing up to a woman who was vilifying Hafeez Ahmeda Bhatti and his wife for wearing a headscarf.
The video recorded on Ms Eden's phone begins with the woman in red saying to Mr Bhatti's wife: "Why do you wear it for a man that marries a six year-old girl?"
The couple who were travelling with a baby in a pram, did not respond to the woman. However Ms Eden is soon heard telling the attacker to shut her mouth.
"She wears it for herself OK, she wears it because she wants to be modest with her body not because of people like you who are going to sit there and disrespect her," Eden says in the video.
The woman who allegedly abused the muslim couple on the train. Photo: Supplied.
The abusive passenger then brings up the Lindt cafe siege in Martin Place and tells the woman that her kids behead people.
"That's not her doing it. That's a minority of people, not a majority of people," says Ms Eden.
After the woman in red mentions the "148 Christians murdered in Kenya" and the Muslims murdering each other Syria, Ms Eden questions what that has to do with Mr Bhatti's wife.
The passenger responds with "Nothing, you're the one that started the argument."
Ms Eden told the woman:"Shut your mouth...If you've got nothing nice to say, don't say anything, it's simple."
On Facebook Ms Eden wrote that the woman then turned on her and told her to go join terrorist group IS.
"People like this make me sick. People who are so ignorant and disrespectful to other people who were clearly sitting there minding their own business," she wrote on Facebook.
Ms Eden told her Facebook friends that it took "everything in me to hold back on this woman, she made me soo angry! I had to actually stop myself before i got too worked up."
The incident occurred on Wednesday afternoon on a train ride from Town Hall to Sydney Airport prompting Mr Bhatti to write on Facebook, "Once again, victim of racism by an old Christian lady".
"I tried to explain that media is misrepresenting Islam and Muslim but she was continue to deny and commenting that we should go back where we came from," he wrote.
He then thanked Ms Eden for her actions.
"I generally believe that you and many other Australian do respect all religions," he wrote.
Ms Eden told Fairfax Media on Thursday that she was overwhelmed by the response.
"I genuinely have tears in my eyes at the messages people have sent me," she said. "I didn't realise how something so small would end up being so important."
Morning news break – April 16
