Australian woman praised for defending Muslim couple

SYDNEY: A Muslim couple racially abused by a Sydney train passenger have thanked another commuter who defended them, with a video capturing the incident going viral on social media as police launched an investigation.
The pair, Hafeez Ahmed Bhatti and Khalida Hafeez, were riding on the airport-bound train on Wednesday when a woman sitting nearby started to rant at them, the person who recorded the footage said.
“The lady next to me was saying things like ‘all the people that were dying were because of the Muslims in the world and look what’s happening overseas’,” Stacey Eden, reported to be her early 20s, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Friday.
Eden said the woman added: “Read the newspapers, why are you following this religion for, why do you wear things like that so you can marry a man who’s going to go marry a six-year-old?
“I was like, ‘this isn’t right, why are you saying these kinds of things?’”
Eden is heard replying to the woman on the video, which she posted on Facebook: “She wears them for herself, OK? She wears them because she wants to be modest with her body.”
Bhatti shared Eden’s clip on his Facebook page on Thursday, writing: “This video was not recorded by me. But that is what happened to us on Sydney train, God bless Stacey Eden who support us.”
“I was little shocked, she touched my wife’s head like she was blessing although no one like a stranger to touch them and then she started her ignorant comments,” he added.