Sydney strangers rush to help young Muslim woman and boy being harassed

Rasa - The young Muslim woman stands in shock as she is told she looks like a terrorist in the heart of Sydney's CBD – but it's what happens next that most shocked the man who orchestrated the nasty abuse.

News ID: 1336

Date: 07 October 2014 - 17:59

RNA – According to a report by the local “9News”, in seconds, a group of schoolgirls run towards the hijab-wearing woman, but before they can reach her another group of girls grab her by the arm and whisk her away from the putrid attack.

And when there weren't girls to defend the Muslim woman, dozens of other onlookers stridently defended her against the acting bigot who was set up in a social experiment to test the reaction by random Australians to Islamic abuse.

At one stage in the four-and-a-half-minute video, a mother walking with her family approaches as a Muslim boy is being abused and angrily tells the bigot to leave the child alone.

"Don't you dare speak to people like that. How dare you? These people belong here too, as much as we do. Alright? If you don't like it, go live somewhere else," the mother says.

Her reaction almost made the video's director Kamal Saleh cry.

"This video is hard proof that the Australian public do not welcome hate against Muslims. Yes it does occur but it is clearly not welcome," Mr Saleh said.

The media and law student at Macquarie University told ninemsn he expected most witnesses to ignore the Muslim woman and boy who participated in the experiment.

"We did not expect every single person that witnessed the attack to intervene," he said.

"It was an overwhelming response. It reaffirmed our view of humanity."

The footage was shot at Hyde Park last Thursday between 2pm and 5pm.

The video has had more than 350,000 views since being uploaded online, and Mr Saleh said he had received praise from around the world.

He said journalists in Turkey were inspired by the level of tolerance of Australians, and people in Germany wanted to broadcast the video as an example of acceptance.

Mr Saleh said the debate in recent weeks around the attire of Muslim women inspired him to do the social experiment to test if anti-Islamic views were widespread.

"I'm optimistic for the future of Australia," he said.

"I hope these people will be role models, not only for Australians but for the rest of the world.

"Definitely there are those incidences ... when we find a rare bigoted individual. But as Muslims we always have to keep our head up and whatever challenge is brought to us we know we have the tools to counter that."

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