Photo: John Martin

Zainub Priya Dala's injuries after she was was beaten with a brick.

On Tuesday, the Media Review Network (MRN), a South African-based media watchdog focusing on Muslim issues came up with a really silly post about the media portrayal of the assault of Durban author ZP Dala last week. THE DAILY VOX TEAM assesses the MRN's claims - and finds them wanting.

Dala was driving to the beautician when three men attacked her. They held a knife to her neck, smashed her face with a brick and reportedly called her "Rushdie's Bitch" because of her positive remarks about Salman Rushdie, the controversial author of The Satanic Verses.

In the lengthy post, posted on the organisation's website (and then tweeted out to every journalist on the planet) author Aayesha J Soni accuses the media of "poor journalism".

"Despite no evidence confirming that this was indeed a Muslim person acting on behalf of Islam, the entire tone of the news story feeds into the mainstream media trend of recent Islamophobia," Soni writes.

The inaccurate claims in the article are so plentiful, it's hard to pick out the good bits amid the carnage.

But the MRN, as a body purportedly looking at how Muslims are represented in the media, has a duty to do its job properly, else it becomes a silly flag-bearer of a self-fulfilling prophesy. And this article is certainly counter-productive.

The Daily Vox assesses five of the claims made in the article

Fact: The author saw the perpetrators. She told the Daily Vox: "They were between 30 and 40 years old. They were Indian. One had a short beard. They were not dressed in any particular religious garb. I think they were Muslim but, of course, I can't be sure."

On the face of it, it's surely fair to say that they probably were Muslim. And it's okay if they were Muslim, is it not? Muslims are human too. They make mistakes. Isn't that the entire point of asking for equal treatment or do we want to rule out that they were Muslim unless there were (four) witnesses to the assault?

2. "Stereotyping of acts of terrorism have become synonymous with people acting violently on behalf of Islam, to the point of acceptance that when articles like these are published we don't even critically analyse the logical sequence of events."

Fact: ZP Dala went to lengths to explain that this attack wasn't a reflection on the South African Muslim community but the work of individuals (who may or may not have been Muslim). If certain media decided to be bigoted Rottweilers as a result, it certainly wasn't instigated by her.