El 'efecto Voldemort', el mito del 'lobo solitario' y el miedo a aceptar que los terroristas son musulmanes

Lord Voldemort es el enemigo principal de Harry Potter y, según una profecía, tiene el poder de vencerlo. Pero la comunidad mágica teme tanto a Voldemort que prefiere referirse a él como «Quien-Tú-Sabes», «El-Que-No-Debe-Ser-Nombrado» o el «Innombrable».

Esta ficción literaria ha servido al dirigente liberal demócrata británico de origen paquistaní, Maajid Nawaz, para definir como 'efecto Voldemort' la oposición de la corrección política a considerar el terrorismo islamista como un fenómeno religioso. Nawaz, que en su juventud fue un militante islamista radical, distingue entre islam e islamismo. Este último es un movimiento militar, político y sobre todo religioso que desea imponer el islam por la fuerza.

Nawaz y un grupo de musulmanes seculares han creado Quilliam, a la que llaman la primera organización de lucha contra el extremismo islamista y de ultraderecha en el mundo. Para estos intelectuales, de la misma manera que en el siglo XX nos enfrentamos al terrorismo izquierdista y a la 'revolución comunista', ahora, en el siglo XXI, debemos enfrentarnos al terrorismo yihadista y su 'revolución islámica'. Y para ganar esta guerra tenemos que aceptar que se trata de un conflicto religioso, que los terroristas son musulmanes y que los' lobos solitarios' son un mito:

In 2013, researchers at Pennsylvania State University studied the behavior of 119 so-called lone-wolf terrorists. This study found that even though these terrorists went “operational” alone, in 79 percent of cases others were at least aware of the perpetrators extremist ideology, and in 64 percent of cases family and friends were aware of the individual’s terrorist intent.

Last year, academics at the University of Miami looked at 196 jihadist groups who used social media during the first eight months of 2015. The groups had a combined total of more than 100,000 members. Jihadists who had not subscribed to a group had either recently been in one, or soon joined one.

Pushing the “lone wolf” myth suits multiple actors. It allows the terrorists to exaggerate the extent of the infiltration of our societies by peddling the notion that your next door neighbor could suddenly turn against you. It also helps our security services and politicians. A “lone wolf” is hard to identify, almost impossible to predict, and very hard to stop. The explanation can act as a cover for serious security failings where terror cells have previously been watched, only for the monitoring to have been stopped.

Most importantly, though, blaming terror attacks on isolated loners who get radicalized because they can’t fit into regular society flagrantly sidesteps the role that community sympathy and insulation for extremist ideologies plays. It turns a blind eye to the fact that we are living through a full blown jihadist insurgency being fought in our own streets.

ISIS did not radicalize the 6,000 European fighters who left their homes to join a group that was partly responsible for reintroducing sexual slavery to the modern world. No. Those thousands of angry young European born Muslims were already radicalized. ISIS merely plucked the low hanging fruit.

For decades Islamist groups have been working within my own Muslim communities across Europe pushing the notion that we must resurrect a modern theocracy called a “caliphate.” In declaring its caliphate, the so-called Islamic State merely plugged a pre-existing demand that Islamist groups had been building for years. The horrible truth is that no terrorist insurgency can exist within any society without a level of community complacency towards the extremist ideas it rests on. The myth of the “lone wolf” allows us to ignore the role of ideology.