WHEN a Muslim man beats his wife why does the broader community focus on his religion rather than on the crime?

The question of culture, religion and violence was at the heart of the discussion when the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women, Rashida Manjoo, met representatives of migrant and refugee women's groups in Bankstown last week.

"As soon as we use a preface like Muslim or Afghan, suddenly the issue becomes about culture, not domestic violence," said Judy Saba, a psychologist who works with the NSW Police cultural diversity team.

Ms Manjoo, a South African who has spent the past three years investigating the dark world of domestic and state violence against women, is on an informal study tour of Australia that takes her from Redfern and Bankstown to Fitzroy Crossing and Canberra, where she will meet the Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon.

She is here to listen - and what she heard from the dozen women representing mainly Muslim, African and Asian women's groups was of the struggle to deal with issues such as domestic violence without impugning their communities.


"We are in a bind because the community is vilified," she said. "Putting the issue in the public space feeds into the stereotype of Muslim men beating their wives.

''People cannot hear that violence against women is not a religious phenomenon; there are economic, social and migration issues, and individual personal psychology involved. But people can't hear anything but religion."

Juliana Nkrumah, the founder of African Women Australia, said domestic violence did not discriminate. "We should not excuse cultural practices that are damaging,'' she said, ''but nor should we use culture as an excuse for damaging behaviour."

She said people smugglers were arranging visas for African women to fly to Australia and then abandoning them to their fate. The women fell victim to sexual and economic exploitation.

"This is not to do with culture … it's to do with violence against women," she said.

Yet the experience of trauma in the home country and adjusting to a new land subjected refugees to unique pressures that required culturally appropriate and specialist services.

"Families who maybe never have experienced domestic violence before suddenly do so in the new place," Ms Saba said.

"Women who have survived torture, rape, the loss of their children find themselves here in an abusive relationship with nowhere to go for help."

Ms Manjoo said pathologising a religion or culture created the illusion that a problem like domestic violence did not exist in the dominant culture, but was about "the other".