Salafi Jihadism

Salafi jihadism or jihadist-Salafism is a transnational religious-political ideology based on a belief in "physical" jihadism and the Salafi movement of returning to what adherents believe to be true Sunni Islam.

The terms "Salafist jihadist" and "jihadist-Salafism" were coined by scholar Gilles Kepel in 2002 to describe "a hybrid Islamist ideology" developed by international Islamist volunteers in the Afghan anti-Soviet jihad who had become isolated from their national and social class origins. The concept was described by Martin Kramer as an academic term that "will inevitably be [simplified to] jihadism or the jihadist movement in popular usage." (emphasis supplied)

Practitioners are referred to as "Salafi jihadis" or "Salafi jihadists". They are sometimes described as a variety of Salafi, and sometimes as separate from "good Salafis" whose movement eschews any political and organisational allegiances as potentially divisive for the Muslim community and a distraction from the study of religion.

In the 1990s, extremist jihadists of the Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya were active in the attacks on police, government officials and tourists in Egypt, and Armed Islamic Group of Algeria was a principal group in the Algerian Civil War. The most famous jihadist-Salafist attack is the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States by al-Qaeda. While Salafism had next to no presence in Europe in the 1980s, by the mid-2000s, Salafist jihadists had acquired "a burgeoning presence in Europe, having attempted more than 30 terrorist attacks among E.U. countries since 2001." While many see the influence and activities of Salafi jihadists as in decline after 2000 (at least in the United States), others see the movement as growing in the wake of the Arab Spring and breakdown of state control in Libya and Syria.

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