From a wise netfriend:

The international human rights instruments say that human rights are to be exercised within the law and that human rights cannot be used as an excuse for taking other human rights away from people. It would not be a legitimate use of human rights to use the right to religious freedom as the reason for destroying a person’s human right to live in safety. Assault is assault, murder is murder, and both are crimes even when they occur within families. Religion is not and should not be a recognized excuse for assault or murder either in Australian or international law…

We should be wary of seeing Islam as any more accepting of family violence than Christianity, given the levels of family violence that have occurred in “Christian” homes – feminists had a very serious struggle before church leaders accepted in recent years that Christianity contributed to family violence and that the church should take a strong stand against family violence. In the 1980s, some Christian feminists were vilified for raising the issue of family violence as an issue in Christianity. They were seen as seeking to undermine Christianity. Even now, there are Christians in Australia (and the USA) who argue that families are a private sphere and men should be able to use force to control women and children. Murder has taken place in many “Christian” homes.

Christianity has also been used as an excuse for the murders of gay men and lesbians – and George Bush and many of his supporters seemed to claim that he was doing God’s will in going to war on Afghanistan and Iraq. Christianity is also used by some Christians to justify capitalism and the global economic system, even though that system has led to poor nations being required to service unpayable debt at the cost of millions of children’s lives annually…

Christianity has blood on its hands and we should be very wary of attributing more violence to Islam than to Christianity. We should oppose the use of any and all religions to support violence… The Churches’ Decade to Overcome Violence calls on the churches to be critical of the way Christian theology has contributed to the spirit and logic of violence. That is, globally and in Australia, the churches have named that they have much to learn about themselves and their contribution to violence, and much to repent of.

We must therefore be even handed and self-aware in our critique of the religious violence.