A Saudi Arabian woman who was assaulted in a racially motivated attack on a Dublin bus has told Newstalk she believes her attacker was motivated by the negative portrayal of Muslims and Islam in the media.

Mashael Khayyat, a 31-year-old lecturer who is currently studying at Trinity College, told The Pat Kenny Show she was on the number 70 bus, travelling from Trinity College to collect her daughters in Dublin 7, when a man approached her and said: “Allahu Akbar” - the Arabic phrase for "God is Great".

He said the term meant “killing people,” Mashael said.

“I smiled at him. I said 'no we don’t kill people.'

“My intention behind smiling at him was just to make him calm down and make him stay away from me," she said.

The man then punched Mashael on the shoulder.

“But I think the anger inside his heart against Muslims wasn’t satisfied when I smiled at him so he expressed his feelings by hitting me in my left shoulder and said ‘Well I hate Islam’”.

“I immediately understood that he just generalises the violence about Muslims.

“If he has a negative picture from (the activities of) ISIS or from the media or whatever he shouldn’t generalise ... We are 1.6 billion people in the world, we are different people,” she added.

Mashael asked the driver to call the gardaí, who arrived several minutes later and spoke to both Mashael and the man. 

Mashael has lived in Ireland for three years, as she is studying at Trinity as part of her PhD work. She says she believes there is a negative, unfair portrayal and view of Islam in Ireland, due to media coverage by the media with reports of extremist groups such as Islamic State being the dominant element of reports on the religion.

“The problem is always some bad minor people just make a big label for the rest (of Muslims). This is wrong,” she said.

“A lot of people have ignorance about Islam ... How can you correct the image if the media just show the negative image? They just highlight the dark side.”

As she prepares to leave Ireland, with her PhD work coming to a close, Mashael said she hopes she can “leave a good fingerprint about Muslim people” in Ireland.

Listen below to the full interview with Mashael Khayyat