Yesterday I took dd age 7 to the shopping centre. We had finished what we had to do and were sitting on a bench outside the shops having a drink. The benches are pretty long and seat maybe 8 or so people.
About 3 people along from us was a lady wearing Muslim dress - the veil where the eyes are visible but that's all. I think the Niqab?
Dd was looking at the lady and I asked her if she was ok? she said yes, but why is the lady wearing a mask, was it because she was a thief? I cringed (I am fairly used to these sorts of things coming out of dd's mouth and the lady thankfully didn't seem to hear)
I was mid sentence telling dd that although we didn't know the lady so couldn't say for sure, she probably wasn't a thief no but it certainly wasn't why she was wearing her mask which is called a veil. She wears that just like dd was wearing her clothes because she wanted to..we do tend to think of face covering as a bad thing.. for robbers etc but superheroes wear masks too! the guy sitting next to us said (really loudly) "ITS BECAUSE SHE IS A PAKI AND SHE HAS TO BE DIFFERENT.."
The lady definitely heard that, I saw her freeze.
I turned to the bloke and asked him (loudly) whether he knew what he said to be fact or whether he was that ignorant about every stranger he sees? If my dd hadn't been there I probably would have sworn a bit but I didn't fancy a full on row in front of her so I raised my voice a bit and started telling her how good it is that we live in a country where people can live as they please as long as they aren't being hurtful to others. We were finished with our drinks then anyway so got up to go and as we did I gave the lady a nod and she nodded back, this guy was still going on about the loss of liberty in this country and blah blah as we walked off.
aibu to have not said much though? what would you have said? not just to the bloke but in answer to dd's question? I was going to say its a religious thing but its not really that is it? The guy was around 40 by the way so cannot even excuse his ignorance as a generational thing (not that I think that an acceptable reason anyway but some seem to)