The murder of Drummer Lee Rigby has raised a lot of uncomfortable questions over the past week or so. The perennial issue that always rears its head is the apparent failure of a significant minority of British Muslims to ‘integrate’, whatever that might mean. The trouble is that we are faced with an apparently unresolvable dichotomy. I despise the EDL. Britain has always been adept at integration; we have a long and proud history of being a nation of immigrants. The EDL message that Is­lam is intrinsically a threat to the United King­dom is anathema to our dearest liberal values. Yet at the same time, it is impossible to deny that the barbarians that murdered Rigby were devout Muslims. The understandable method in which the government and Muslim commu­nities have attempted to defuse the situation is by claiming that these men were not ‘true’ Muslims. Understandable, but wrong.

 Islam, like all faiths, has the potential to in­spire violence. I am not a theologian so I am only vaguely aware that the passages of the Hadith and the Qur’an that appear belligerent have been misconstrued. However, that inter­pretation is not clear to all, and certainly in the hands of a radical imam with an absence of scruples the Holy Book has the potential to be misused for some quite unholy purposes. The problem with saying that this attack had noth­ing to do with Islam is that it feeds the EDL’s victim complex. It encourages them to believe that the Establishment really is engaged in a conspiracy to destroy ‘Englishness’ for vague nefarious reasons.

British Muslims are not murdering British soldiers on the streets. None of them are con­tributing to Britain’s already burgeoning arms trade by manufacturing car bombs and suicide vests in their garage à la Walter White. The Mus­lims of York Mosque adopted the most perfect­ly British attitude to an inflammatory EDL rally by inviting them in for tea and biscuits so they could have a chat and sort the whole thing out. This is what is so disgusting about the EDL mes­sage. The vast majority of Muslims are integrat­ed, and certainly more British in outlook than the despicably intolerant extremist groups who want to force them to leave the country. A vast majority, however large, is not the same as all. How do we avoid the dichotomy which I set out earlier? How do we explain that the EDL is wrong in the context of how peaceful most of Britain’s Muslims are, whilst still accepting that there are some individuals who are in­spired to violence, actual or attempted, by the same ideology that drives others to peace?

An imam in Oxford has caused controversy by suggesting that it was British foreign policy that led to the atrocity in Woolwich. We shall leave aside all the problematic implications that this has for now. We can grudgingly accept that some people are motivated to terrorism because of the Iraq War. It is, after all, the ex­planation that the extremists themselves gave. However, to focus on the Iraq war as the imam did is a very dangerous move to make, even if it is a motivating factor, without further qualifi­cation. These men were Nigerian in origin, and had nothing in common with the Iraqis save their faith. If we are to argue that a Muslim from a country hundreds of miles away from Iraq can be motivated to murder based on what he perceives as an injustice done to people sim­ilar in faith only, then we basically imply that Islam is a “fifth column” — that we can never be quite sure to trust Muslims because they will always put matters of faith before their local community. The Muslims who invited the EDL for tea were certainly interested in the fate of their communities. To suspect that at any time they might be working surreptitiously to es­tablish a universal Caliphate is reprehensible.

This allows us to resolve the dilemma. Islam was a banner for these attacks, not a cause. These men fundamentally lacked an identity. Whatever preacher latched on to them, for all his moral odiousness, gave them an identity. This is really no different from the KKK in the United States preying on the socially dispos­sessed, and persuading them that their prob­lems can all be blamed on the blacks and the Jews. The difference between the Muslims that invited the EDL in for tea and the extremists who invited an increase in EDL membership is that the British Muslims have communal ties, and to be a British Muslim is meaningful. For the extremist, all they have to define them is an idea. If we all take steps towards reducing social exclusion, this would not just reduce the threat of Islamic extremism. It would also reduce the numbers of otherwise socially ex­cluded people who actually make up the ranks of the EDL.

Have you ever listened to the lyrics of Mystikal’s ‘Shake ya ass’? For the uninitiated, it is a song that can cause even the most ardent feminist to become a frenzied bacchanal on the dance floor. But, “shake ya ass, show me what you workin with. I came here with my d*ck in my hand. Don’t make me leave here with my foot in yo’ ass”, hardly alludes to someone who believes in gender equality. And Mystikal, a word of advice: you may be hankering for some action but at least hold something a little less conspicuous. A glass of champagne p’haps?

It is all too easy to dismiss these disturbing lyrics with the trite excuse that it’s ‘just hip-hop. After all, rap music and hip-hop have long been mired in controversy for their blatant misogyny, which emerged in the 90s, when lyrics that trafficked purely in lewd language flourished into a hip-hop sub-genre. Yet songs laced with crude and brutal expressions of sexism shows no sign of budging. Juelz Santana’s “There It Go (The Whistle Song),” was a chart hit that is as close to a street harassment anthem as a song can come, with lyrics like “move your thang/there it go/I don’t need to ask I proceed to grab“. Such lyrics are as indefensible as those songs which spew vulgarities “Imma beat dat p*ssy up” and implore women to ‘bend over’.

Vulgar glorification of pimping and female-ownership hasn’t prevented artists such as Snoop Dogg and Ice T from gaining mainstream acceptance. Snoop Dogg is, after all, a man who has walked women in dog chains and dog collars across concert stages and spouted lyrics, which explicitly advocate violence against women.  “Can U Control Yo Hoe“, isfull of some real clangers:  “You’ve got to put that bitch in her place/Even if it’s slapping her in her face … This is what you force me to do.” And yet such raw misogyny is overlooked by his apparently colourful charisma and quirky dress sense.

Chris Brown is one of the best examples of this “cultural amnesia”. Having violently abused his girlfriend, Rihanna, to the extent that she had to be hospitalised, he is now not only considered musically relevant, but has also subsequently won an MTV Music Award, and has a sold-out tour. Most worrying of all, a large proportion of Brown’s fan base are teenage girls, who, during his Grammy performance, sent tweets out to the tune of: “I’d let Chris Brown beat me up any day”. Despite the fact that he’s purring that, “No is not an option. Are you ready, I’m a take what’s mine”.

Consider the gross double standards. Eminem was pressurised to apologise for his homophobic lyrics. And so he should be. How, then, can we allow misogynistic lyrics to be treated differently? All the bass in the world cannot disguise Tyler’s disgusting message, from ‘The Creator’: “We go skate, rape sluts and eat donuts from Randy”. Songs such as these subscribe men to a distorted guideline of how to measure their masculinity. They propagate the myth of women as a monolith: a sex object that can be used and abused in any form to satisfy the sexual desires of a man. When men are taught that sex is a commodity, and women are taught that it’s an emotional experience, you’re not going to end up with a functional market or indeed a set of norms for establishing relationships. Instead, you have a recipe for anger and entitlement.

Undoubtedly music fuels misogynistic attitudes by contributing to the belief that women’s bodies should be sexually available, but it does not create that perception alone. It begs the question, then: why do musicians around the world feel confident that audiences will sing along to lyrics that demean women? The sentiments behind that music do not exist in a vacuum. They thrive in religious texts, the lack of female legal protections, daily street harassment and social attitudes towards women.

Of course, rappers are not the only proponents of misogyny in popular culture. They are far from the first. The music industry has been saturated with a sprawling jungle of misogynistic imagery, from country musicians bemoaning a “no good woman” to craggy faced rock stars boasting of their latest conquest.

Rap and hip-hop music are, in principle, forms of oppositional culture that offers a message of resistance, empowerment, and social critique. But this intentionally avoids analysis of explicitly misogynist and sexist lyrics. To overlook the lyrical content is like eating a sandwich without the filling. Granted, gangsta rap is all about bravado, self-regard, macho posturing and, tenuously, fun. But that does not excuse the content. It is, in many cases, simply a mantle for misogyny.