A 23-year-old from Sydney has been widely praised online for standing up to a woman who verbally abused a Muslim woman and her husband.

Pathology worker Stacey Eden intervened during a CityRail train ride from Town Hall to the airport about 1.40pm on Wednesday after an older female passenger vilified the married Muslim woman, who was wearing a hijab.

Ms Eden captured the attack on video, which has been viewed almost 80,000 times.

She said she noticed a group of people enter the train, particularly a man and woman wearing a scarf with a baby.

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At that point she said an old lady walked over and started speaking to them.

“I was just listening to my music,” Ms Eden told the ABC.

“The old lady actually bent over and touched the lady’s scarf while she was talking.

“I didn’t think anything of it.”

In the video, Ms Eden can be heard telling the old woman to leave the other woman’s dress alone.

“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,” she said in the video.

The abusive passenger can also be heard telling Ms Eden to join terrorist group Islamic State.

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Ms Eden said she got angry and started recording the incident.

“She was picking on her for the way she was dressed and that’s what really got to me,” she said.

“This lady that was sitting across from me wearing a scarf, she was minding her own business, she never said anything out of line, she never even spoke.

“That’s why I decided to say something because it just made me really angry and upset.”

Ms Eden later wrote on Facebook: “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.”

The Muslim woman’s husband Hafeez Ahmeda Bhatti praised and thanked Ms Eden on social media.

“I [genuinely] believe that you and many other Australian[s] do respect all religions,” Mr Bhatti wrote on Facebook.

“This video was not made by me. That is what happened to us on a Sydney train, God bless Stacey Eden she supported us”.

A NSW police spokesman said they were aware of “alleged racial comments” made on the Airport, Inner-West and South Line on Wednesday but had not received a report of any alleged offence yet.

“We encourage anyone who is the victim of a bias-motivated crime to report the matter to local police, the Speak Out Hotline on 1800 131 555 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000,” the spokesman said.

-with ABC