Jihad: Historical Meanings and Political Appropriations

Jihad: Historical Meanings, Political Transformations, and Modern Interpretations

Historical Meanings and Religious Foundations

The collected sources demonstrate that jihad has never possessed a single universally accepted definition. Classical Islamic scholarship understood the term broadly as striving in the service of God, encompassing personal moral discipline, religious education, charitable activity, social reform, defense of Muslim communities, and, under specific legal circumstances, armed conflict. The Qur'an, hadith, and centuries of legal interpretation produced a complex tradition rather than a single doctrine.

Islamic Law and Classical Jurisprudence

Classical Muslim jurists developed detailed legal rules governing armed jihad, political authority, treaties, civilian protection, prisoners, taxation, and legitimate warfare. These discussions evolved within the political realities of competing medieval states and empires rather than as timeless or universally applied legal formulas. Numerous scholars emphasized restrictions intended to regulate warfare and distinguish legitimate military action from unlawful violence.

Empire, Reform, and Anticolonial Resistance

Many historical movements invoked jihad during periods of foreign conquest and colonial rule. Studies of North Africa, India, the Caucasus, Sudan, Somalia, Morocco, and West Africa show that jihad often functioned as a language of political resistance, religious reform, and community mobilization. Colonial governments likewise employed the language of jihad to portray diverse resistance movements as fanaticism, frequently oversimplifying local political and social conflicts.

West African States and Islamic Reform

Several sources examine the Sokoto Caliphate and other West African reform movements that emerged through jihad. These movements established educational institutions, legal systems, administrative governments, and centers of Islamic scholarship while also expanding political authority and territorial control. The literature highlights both the intellectual achievements and political complexities of these historical states.

Islamism and the Modern Transformation of Jihad

Twentieth- and twenty-first-century Islamist movements reinterpreted older concepts of jihad within the context of nationalism, colonialism, authoritarian governments, globalization, and modern political ideology. Researchers consistently distinguish between Islam as a religion, Islamism as a political movement, and jihadism as a specific militant ideology. While some Islamist organizations pursued elections, social welfare, and gradual political reform, jihadist groups elevated armed struggle as the central method of political change.

Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Global Jihadism

The collection documents how organizations such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State transformed jihad into a revolutionary transnational ideology. These groups selectively interpreted religious texts while adapting their strategies to regional conflicts, civil wars, state collapse, propaganda, recruitment, and international networks. Scholars emphasize that modern jihadist movements represent historically recent political developments rather than direct continuations of classical Islamic doctrine.

Women, Propaganda, and Recruitment

Modern research explores the changing participation of women in jihadist organizations as recruiters, propagandists, educators, financiers, supporters, and occasionally combatants. Other studies examine how militant organizations use media, symbolism, social networks, psychological messaging, and visual propaganda to recruit supporters and legitimize political violence.

Public Language and Political Debate

Numerous sources examine how governments, journalists, scholars, and political movements use the language of jihad in public discourse. Many argue that conflating Islam, Islamism, and jihadism obscures important historical and religious distinctions while contributing to public misunderstanding. Modern debates often reflect contemporary political concerns as much as historical Islamic teachings.

Conclusion

The collected scholarship presents jihad as a historically evolving concept shaped by changing religious interpretation, legal scholarship, political authority, warfare, colonialism, state formation, and modern ideological conflict. Rather than representing a single unchanging doctrine, jihad has been interpreted differently across regions and historical periods. Contemporary scholarship generally emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between classical Islamic teachings, diverse political movements within the Muslim world, and modern jihadist organizations that selectively reinterpret earlier traditions for revolutionary purposes.

Women, Gender, and Jihadist Appropriations

Women in Islamic State Propaganda

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.03804 | Mojtaba Heidarysafa, Kamran Kowsari, Tolu Odukoya, Philip Potter, Laura Barnes and Donald Brown | arXiv | December 9, 2019] This computational study analyzes themes and emotions in Islamic State publications directed toward women. The propaganda combined religious obligation, belonging, family, victimhood, adventure, sacrifice, and political identity to make participation in the organization appear meaningful and morally justified.

Gender in the Jihad

[https://giwps.georgetown.edu/resource/gender-in-the-jihad/ | Audrey Alexander and Rebecca Turkington | Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security | May 21, 2019] This research analyzes hundreds of women involved in jihadism-inspired terrorism. It compares women’s organizational roles, criminal histories, travel, recruitment, plotting, and foreign-fighter participation with those of male militants.

Women in Jihad: A Historical Perspective

[https://icct.nl/publication/women-jihad-historical-perspective | Sofia Koller | International Centre for Counter-Terrorism | September 19, 2018] This policy brief traces women’s participation in jihadist movements as propagandists, recruiters, fundraisers, couriers, educators, wives, mothers, and occasionally combatants. It challenges assumptions that women involved in militant organizations are necessarily passive or politically insignificant.

Female Jihad: Women in the Islamic State

[https://politikon.iapss.org/index.php/politikon/article/view/74 | Katharina Kneip | Politikon | November 2016] Kneip examines the gender ideology promoted by the Islamic State. Women were generally directed toward marriage, motherhood, recruitment, education, and domestic support, although the organization’s policies changed when military and organizational pressures created a need for broader participation.

The Changing Roles of Women in Violent Islamist Groups

[https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs5746/files/The%20Changing%20Roles%20of%20Women%20in%20Violent%20Islamist%20Groups.pdf | Devorah Margolin | George Washington University Program on Extremism | March 2019] Margolin argues that women’s roles in organizations such as Hamas and the Islamic State change according to strategic need. Groups that initially restrict women to domestic or supportive positions may authorize recruitment, policing, suicide attacks, or combat when organizational survival is threatened.

West African Jihads and State Formation

The Intellectual and Literary Legacy of the Sokoto Caliphate

[https://sarpublication.com/media/articles/SARJALL_71_22-25.pdf | Tambari Abbas Bashar | South Asian Research Journal of Arts, Language and Literature | February 22, 2025] The article examines the educational and literary institutions developed after Usman dan Fodio’s jihad. Sokoto became a major center of Islamic scholarship, administration, legal writing, poetry, and women’s education, illustrating how a jihad movement could evolve into a durable state and intellectual tradition.

=====A Geography of Jihad: Sokoto Jihadism and the Islamic Frontier in West Africa===== [https://www.zmo.de/en/events/a-geography-of-jihad/lecture-series-7 | Sebastian Gottschalk | Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient | March 30, 2022] This research explores the geographical imagination of the Sokoto jihad and the state it created. Religious reformers classified communities and territories according to shifting ideas of belief, unbelief, legitimate government, migration, settlement, taxation, and warfare.

Purity and Statecraft: The Fulani Jihad and Its Empire

[https://pure.uvt.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/1002164/purityandstatecraft.pdf | Walter E. A. van Beek | Anthropos | 1988] This article studies the interaction between religious ideals and practical government in the Sokoto Caliphate. Reformers emphasized scholarship, austerity, justice, and moral purification, but territorial expansion also produced taxation, political hierarchy, economic exploitation, and new relationships with non-Muslim populations.

=====War and Wilderness: The Sokoto Jihad and Its Animal Environments===== [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21681392.2016.1242237 | Stephanie Zehnle | Journal of Eastern African Studies | November 2016] Zehnle examines how Sokoto reformers described wilderness, settlement, animals, Muslim identity, and allegedly non-Muslim populations. Environmental imagery helped define the boundaries of the political community and legitimize expansion into contested frontier regions.

Sufism, Reform, and Anticolonial Resistance

Islamism in Somalia

[https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-1428 | Mohamed Haji Ingiriis | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History | January 22, 2025] This article traces Somali Islamic political movements from Sufi-led resistance against colonial rule to later Islamist and jihadist organizations. It shows that religious mobilization included peaceful preaching, anticolonial struggle, electoral politics, social organization, insurgency, and competing visions of the Somali state.

Islam and Emancipation

[https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-949 | Paul E. Lovejoy | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History | April 20, 2022] This overview examines relationships among Islam, enslavement, emancipation, reform, and political change in Africa. Jihad movements sometimes condemned the enslavement of Muslims and challenged abusive rulers, but victorious states could also preserve or expand systems of slavery.

Treatise on Jihad and Migration in the Russian Caucasus

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/islamic-law-in-context/treatise-on-jihad-and-migration/6B6A35BCCAF2DEF4F2C471C7FF44397F | Abd al-Rahman al-Thughuri, translated and analyzed by Mahmood Kooria | Cambridge University Press | 2022] Written during Russian imperial expansion, this treatise argued that Muslims should migrate from conquered territory rather than accept permanent non-Muslim rule. It demonstrates how jihad and migration could operate as related but distinct responses to colonial conquest.

Muslim Brotherhoods in West African History

[https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-171 | Ghislaine Lydon | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History | October 29, 2021] The article surveys Sufi brotherhoods as networks of scholarship, commerce, mediation, political influence, and resistance. European colonial governments frequently suspected these organizations of preparing jihad even when their leaders favored negotiation, spiritual reform, or peaceful accommodation.

Colonial Panics and Political Islam in German East Africa

[https://brill.com/view/journals/mtsr/33/3-4/article-p321_4.xml | Jörg Haustein | Method & Theory in the Study of Religion | 2021] Haustein examines colonial fears that Muslim networks in German East Africa were preparing a unified jihad. These fears often revealed more about European racial assumptions and administrative insecurity than about actual Muslim political coordination.

Muslim Mobilization in Imperial Russia’s Caucasus

[https://academic.oup.com/book/12020/chapter/161306357 | Robert D. Crews | Oxford University Press | 2015] This chapter examines Muslim resistance, accommodation, and political mobilization under Russian rule in the North Caucasus. Islamic institutions could support armed jihad, negotiation, migration, or cooperation, depending on local conditions and competing interpretations of legitimate religious leadership.

=====Islam and Anti-Colonial Rebellions in North and West Africa, 1914–1918===== [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/article/islam-and-anticolonial-rebellions-in-north-and-west-africa-19141918/3B32E69D3E032BAB8356A62FED55B963 | Jonathan Krause | The Historical Journal | September 2021] The article compares Muslim rebellions against French colonial rule in Algeria and Niger. Religious leaders used jihad to connect local grievances to a wider moral struggle, while colonial authorities depicted resistance as fanaticism and attempted to mobilize rival Muslim authorities against the rebels.

Sudanese Mahdism and Competing Historical Memories

Al-Mahdiya Continues to Haunt Sudan

[https://www.cmi.no/publications/9171-al-mahdiya-continues-to-haunt-sudan | Endre Stiansen | Chr. Michelsen Institute | April 5, 2024] This discussion considers the continuing political and symbolic importance of the nineteenth-century Mahdist movement. Sudanese politicians, religious families, nationalists, and military rulers have repeatedly invoked or contested its legacy in debates over sovereignty, Islam, revolution, and national identity.

The Mahdiyya Government and Its Effect on Modern Sudan

[https://academicjournals.org/journal/AJHC/article-full-text-pdf/5C0755372567 | Stephen J. B. Mading | African Journal of History and Culture | 2024] The article examines the rise and collapse of the Mahdist state and its ideological influence on later Sudanese governments. It considers how a movement launched through religious revolt attempted to transform itself into an administration capable of taxation, warfare, legal enforcement, and territorial control.

Jihads and Crusades in Sudan from 1881 to the Present

[https://repository.upenn.edu/bitstreams/8067923a-249c-4ad5-8499-79c6e50d5572/download | Heather J. Sharkey | Pennsylvania State University | 2012] Sharkey compares Sudanese declarations of jihad with European and Sudanese rhetoric about crusades. She shows how religious labels intensified conflicts, simplified complex political struggles, and influenced historical memory from the Mahdist uprising through later civil wars.

The Sudanese Mahdi: Frontier Fundamentalist

[https://www.jstor.org/stable/162124 | John O. Voll | International Journal of Middle East Studies | November 1979] Voll examines the many competing portrayals of Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi as religious fanatic, anticolonial revolutionary, reformer, authoritarian ruler, and national hero. The article demonstrates how later political movements selected different elements of the Mahdiyya to support their own visions of Sudanese history.

Qur’anic Foundations and Early Interpretations

Offensive Jihad and Defensive Jihad

[https://iifa-aifi.org/en/33092.html | International Islamic Fiqh Academy | International Islamic Fiqh Academy | November 23, 2022] This resolution defines jihad broadly as legitimate effort undertaken in support of justice, security, mercy, and the communication of Islam. It distinguishes military defense from other forms of religious and social striving and rejects unauthorized violence, aggression, and attacks on protected people.

War and Peace in Islamic Law

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/law-and-sentiment-in-international-politics/war-and-peace-in-islamic-law/D7B23A9F92914C1C3CAC57AA90374D2A | David Traven | Cambridge University Press | 2021] The chapter examines the ethics of warfare in early Islamic law. It discusses restrictions on intentionally attacking women, children, and other noncombatants and considers how earlier Arabian practices, scriptural interpretation, political necessity, and juristic reasoning shaped Islamic rules of war.

Jihad in Islamic Thought

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-world-history-of-violence/jihad-in-islamic-thought/62EBA6E352B5D760D5D05480ECD6C61B | Asma Afsaruddin | Cambridge University Press | 2020] This chapter examines references to jihad in the Qur’an, hadith, Qur’anic commentary, law, ethics, and historical writing. It shows how Muslim thinkers distinguished general striving in the service of God from armed struggle and continually reinterpreted both concepts in response to changing political circumstances.

Jihad in Islamic Law

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/jihad-radicalism-and-the-new-atheism/jihad-in-islamic-law/59C3A03C958424D63012676A0DD796A7 | Mohammad Hassan Khalil | Cambridge University Press | 2017] This chapter explains how classical jurists discussed defensive and offensive forms of jihad. Their theories reflected a premodern world of competing empires, but they also developed rules concerning political authorization, truces, conversion, taxation, prisoners, noncombatants, and the purposes of warfare.

The Doctrine of Jihad: An Introduction

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-law-and-religion/article/doctrine-of-jihad-an-introduction/F49BBA2EEE756E22CBE3BCE0B5B4BE47 | Noor Mohammad | Journal of Law and Religion | 1985] The article introduces the classical legal doctrine of jihad and the historical conditions under which Muslim jurists developed it. It considers the relationships among religious obligation, political authority, territorial expansion, defense, treaties, and the treatment of conquered populations.

Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-middle-east-studies/article/reuven-firestone-jihad-the-origin-of-holy-war-in-islam-new-york-oxford-university-press-1999-pp-206-2500-cloth/5A0905A5206A1F0C61633D5398EFC3A5 | Rudolph Peters | International Journal of Middle East Studies | November 2002] This review discusses Reuven Firestone’s study of how Qur’anic passages concerning warfare emerged from particular conflicts during Muhammad’s lifetime. Firestone argues that these passages contain multiple perspectives that later scholars organized into more systematic doctrines of legitimate war.

A Socio-Legal Analysis of the Concept of Jihad

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-and-comparative-law-quarterly/article/sociolegal-analysis-of-the-concept-of-jihad/5EACAA966517F1B635B24E505BE6C0A7 | Onder Bakircioglu | International and Comparative Law Quarterly | July 2010] Bakircioglu examines jihad through Islamic law, humanitarian principles, political history, and contemporary international law. He argues that both apologetic and hostile accounts often reduce a complicated legal tradition to a single meaning while overlooking debates over authority, necessity, restraint, and civilian protection.

What Does Jihad Mean?

[https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/what-does-jihad-mean | Douglas E. Streusand | Middle East Quarterly | September 1997] Streusand surveys the changing meanings of jihad in Islamic history and Western political debate. The article distinguishes spiritual and military usages while arguing that neither should be erased when examining how the term has functioned in theology, law, imperial expansion, reform, and modern politics.

Public Language, Media, and Political Appropriation

Jihadist Terrorism in the European Union Since 2015

[https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20180703STO07127/jihadist-terrorism-in-the-eu-since-2015 | European Parliament | European Parliament | September 21, 2021] The European Parliament summarizes patterns of jihadist terrorism, recruitment, targets, and security responses in Europe. The article uses jihadism to describe a specific form of violent extremist politics rather than jihad’s broader historical, ethical, devotional, or legal meanings.

=====Islam as a “Floating Signifier”: Right-Wing Populism and Perceptions of Muslims in Denmark===== [https://www.brookings.edu/articles/islam-as-a-floating-signifier-right-wing-populism-and-perceptions-of-muslims-in-denmark/ | Johannes Røislien and contributors | Brookings Institution | July 24, 2019] The article examines how populist political actors use terms associated with Islam as flexible symbols for immigration, insecurity, cultural change, and opposition to liberal values. Such rhetoric can erase distinctions between ordinary Muslims, Islamists, and violent jihadists and turn religious terminology into a tool of domestic political mobilization.

News Coverage of Islam and Muslims in North America

[https://oxfordre.com/religion/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378-e-865 | Rosemary Pennington | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion | March 29, 2017] This overview analyzes patterns in North American media coverage of Islam and Muslims, particularly after September 11, 2001. News narratives have frequently privileged terrorism and conflict, narrowing the public meaning of terms such as Islam, jihad, and sharia while marginalizing their diverse religious and historical uses.

What Does It Mean to Be at War with “Radical Islam”?

[https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-does-it-mean-to-be-at-war-with-radical-islam-on-the-attractions-and-dangers-of-a-vague-term/ | William McCants and Christopher Meserole | Brookings Institution | February 24, 2017] The authors examine the political dangers of vague categories such as “radical Islam.” Conflating Islam, Islamism, and jihadist violence can obscure differences among religious practice, nonviolent political movements, insurgencies, and transnational terrorist organizations while strengthening extremist claims that Muslims as a whole are under attack.

Combating Jihadism

[https://www.government.nl/topics/counterterrorism-and-national-security/combating-jihadism | Government of the Netherlands | Government of the Netherlands | n.d.] This government overview defines jihadism as a violent political ideology and explicitly separates it from the religion practiced by most Muslims. The distinction illustrates how public institutions attempt to identify militant organizations without portraying Muslim communities collectively as responsible for jihadist violence.

Modern Jihadist Ideology and Propaganda

=====Crime as Jihad: Developments in the Crime-Terror Nexus in Europe===== [https://ctc.westpoint.edu/crime-as-jihad-developments-in-the-crime-terror-nexus-in-europe/ | Rajan Basra and Peter R. Neumann | Combating Terrorism Center at West Point | October 25, 2016] The authors examine how some European militants moved between criminal and jihadist environments. Islamic State propaganda attempted to reframe theft, fraud, and other crimes as permissible contributions to jihad, allowing recruits to portray prior criminal skills as useful religious service.

=====Addressing the Enemy: Al-Shabaab’s Psychological Operations Media Warfare===== [https://ctc.westpoint.edu/addressing-enemy-al-shabaabs-psyops-media-warfare/ | Christopher Anzalone | Combating Terrorism Center at West Point | March 5, 2016] Anzalone analyzes al-Shabaab’s sophisticated media operations in Somalia and East Africa. Its messages address local communities, enemy soldiers, foreign governments, and voters in countries contributing troops, combining religious claims about jihad with nationalism, grievance, intimidation, and political persuasion.

=====The Polarizing Effect of Islamic State Aggression on the Global Jihadist Movement===== [https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-polarizing-effect-of-islamic-state-aggression-on-the-global-jihadist-movement/ | William McCants | Combating Terrorism Center at West Point | March 3, 2015] McCants examines how the Islamic State’s uncompromising violence attracted supporters while alienating local communities and rival militant organizations. Its claim to represent the purest form of jihad intensified divisions over authority, territorial control, sectarian attacks, and relations with other insurgent groups.

=====Tweeting for the Caliphate: Twitter as the New Frontier for Jihadist Propaganda===== [https://ctc.westpoint.edu/tweeting-for-the-caliphate-twitter-as-the-new-frontier-for-jihadist-propaganda/ | Nico Prucha and Ali Fisher | Combating Terrorism Center at West Point | June 25, 2013] The article examines the migration of jihadist propaganda from password-protected forums to social media. Twitter allowed supporters to circulate ideological texts, battlefield reports, images, recruitment appeals, and martyrdom narratives to audiences far beyond traditional militant networks.

A Jihadist’s Course in the Art of Recruitment

[https://ctc.westpoint.edu/a-jihadists-course-in-the-art-of-recruitment/ | Brian Fishman | Combating Terrorism Center at West Point | February 2, 2009] This article analyzes a militant recruitment manual that describes how recruiters should gradually isolate, educate, test, and mobilize potential members. The process transforms religious and political dissatisfaction into commitment to clandestine organization and violent action.

The Salafi-Jihad as a Religious Ideology

[https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-salafi-jihad-as-a-religious-ideology/ | Assaf Moghadam | Combating Terrorism Center at West Point | February 15, 2008] Moghadam defines Salafi-jihadism as a modern ideological synthesis rather than a timeless expression of Islam. It combines selective Salafi theology with revolutionary doctrines that prioritize armed struggle, reject existing governments, and divide society into uncompromising categories of loyalty and betrayal.

The Islamic Imagery Project

[https://ctc.westpoint.edu/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Islamic-Imagery-Project.pdf | Jonathan Matusitz, Nelly Lahoud and contributors | Combating Terrorism Center at West Point | March 2006] This study catalogues symbols used in jihadist visual propaganda, including weapons, flags, horses, lions, birds, sunlight, maps, mosques, and images of martyrs. Familiar Islamic and historical motifs are removed from their broader contexts and reconstructed as symbols of militant identity and political struggle.

=====Twenty Years After 9/11: The Fight for Supremacy in Northwest Syria===== [https://ctc.westpoint.edu/twenty-years-after-9-11-the-fight-for-supremacy-in-northwest-syria-and-the-implications-for-global-jihad/ | Charles Lister | Combating Terrorism Center at West Point | September 2021] This article examines conflicts among Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, al-Qaeda loyalists, the Islamic State, Turkey, and other armed groups in Syria. It shows how local governance and territorial survival could lead former al-Qaeda affiliates to modify or abandon elements of transnational jihadist strategy.

On the Horizon: The Future of the Jihadi Movement

[https://ctc.westpoint.edu/on-the-horizon-the-future-of-the-jihadi-movement/ | Barak Mendelsohn | Combating Terrorism Center at West Point | January 2024] Mendelsohn evaluates the condition of the global jihadist movement after two decades of counterterrorism campaigns. Although al-Qaeda and Islamic State central leadership structures were weakened, regional affiliates continued to exploit civil wars, weak governments, communal grievances, and security vacuums.

Modern Islamism and the Transformation of Jihad

=====“Jihadists Claim Their Only Source of Guidance Is the Quran, but Their Rhetoric Is Modern”===== [https://www.lemonde.fr/en/religions/article/2025/01/05/jihadists-claim-their-only-source-of-guidance-is-the-quran-but-their-rhetoric-is-modern_6736718_63.html | Interview with Olivier Hanne | Le Monde | January 5, 2025] Historian Olivier Hanne argues that jihad has been repeatedly reinterpreted and that contemporary jihadists construct a distinctly modern ideology while claiming direct continuity with scripture. They selectively isolate verses, decentralize the authority to declare war, and combine religious symbols with revolutionary politics, nationalism, and modern propaganda.

The Elusive Dream of Pan-Islamism

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-religion-and-war/elusive-dream-of-panislamism/181633C6A99F20427DE6A64BECF06EDC | Thomas Hegghammer | Cambridge University Press | May 4, 2023] The chapter traces modern efforts to create political solidarity across national boundaries in the Muslim world. Jihadi-Salafi organizations adopted an especially militant form of pan-Islamism, but disagreements over sectarianism, attacks on Muslims, political priorities, territorial states, and legitimate leadership repeatedly fragmented the movement.

=====The Evolution of Al-Qaeda: Between Regional Conflicts and a Globalist Perspective===== [https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10036157/ | Alexey M. Vasiliev and contributors | National Library of Medicine | 2023] This article follows al-Qaeda’s development from the Afghan war through its transformation into a transnational network. It examines how leaders elevated violent jihad above other forms of political action, incorporated regional conflicts into a global narrative, and used decentralized affiliates to survive military pressure.

=====Global Jihad: A Brief History and Jihadists of North Africa and the Sahel===== [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/global-jihad-a-brief-history-by-glenn-e-robinson-stanford-stanford-university-press-2020-264p-8500-cloth-2500-paper-jihadists-of-north-africa-and-the-sahel-local-politics-and-rebel-groups-by-alexander-thurston-cambridge-cambridge-university-press-2020-349p-8499-cloth-2499-paper/3CA05B8E0B7A66467F8EEB4BF57E3100 | Joas Wagemakers | Perspectives on Politics | March 9, 2022] This review compares studies of transnational jihad and jihadist movements in North Africa and the Sahel. It stresses that apparently global ideologies are interpreted through local political conflicts, rivalries, grievances, state repression, ethnic relationships, and competition among armed organizations.

The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/5898D4C0B6E29EC290283E9D164B36F9 | Fawaz A. Gerges | Cambridge University Press | 2005] Gerges traces the transition from revolutionary groups focused on nearby Muslim governments—the “near enemy”—to al-Qaeda’s campaign against the United States and other distant powers. The change emerged from strategic debates, repression in Arab states, the Afghan war, international networks, and conflicts among militant leaders.

=====Between the Global and the Local: Islamism, the Middle East, and Indonesia===== [https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/20051101bubalo_fealy.pdf | Anthony Bubalo and Greg Fealy | Brookings Institution | 2005] This report examines how ideas associated with Islamism and jihad traveled from the Middle East to Indonesia. Indonesian activists did not simply reproduce foreign doctrines; they adapted them to local political struggles, religious institutions, communal conflicts, democratic participation, and national traditions.

Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-middle-east-studies/article/gilles-kepel-jihad-the-trail-of-political-islam-cambridge-mass-harvard-university-press-2002-pp-454-3395-cloth-1595-paper/012B6C795F0C1682CB5B0D78B8869E40 | Daniel Brumberg | International Journal of Middle East Studies | 2004] This review discusses Gilles Kepel’s broad history of political Islam from national revival movements to transnational militancy. It considers the effects of the Iranian Revolution, the Afghan war, Saudi religious influence, authoritarian repression, failed Islamist political projects, and the growth of violent networks.

Medieval Law, Empire, and Political Authority

Treatise on Jihad and Migration

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/islamic-law-in-context/treatise-on-jihad-and-migration/6B6A35BCCAF2DEF4F2C471C7FF44397F | Mahmood Kooria | Cambridge University Press | 2022] This chapter studies a nineteenth-century Caucasian treatise that connected jihad with hijra, or migration from territory conquered by a non-Muslim empire. The text shows how Russian expansion forced Muslim scholars to reconsider residence, loyalty, resistance, political submission, and the geographical categories of classical law.

The Use and Abuse of Jihad in the Muslim World

[https://brill.com/edcollchap/book/9789004479784/B9789004479784_s009.pdf | David Cook | Brill | 2005] The chapter examines how the historical prestige of jihad has enabled governments, reformers, insurgents, and extremists to invoke it for very different purposes. Modern militants frequently detach selected texts from the legal restrictions, political institutions, and historical debates that once governed declarations of armed jihad.

Jihad in Medieval and Modern Islam

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/589D57BD818C5BAE5DC6CD76B7FCF15C/S0165115300017538a.pdf/rudolph-peters-transl-and-ed-jihad-in-medieval-and-modern-islam-the-chapter-on-jihad-from-averroes-legal-handbook-bidayat-al-mudita-hid-and-the-treatise-koran-and-fighting-by-the-late-shaykh-al-azhar-.pdf | John Pemble | Itinerario | 1979] This review considers Rudolph Peters’s translations of a medieval legal discussion by Averroes and a modern reformist treatise on warfare. Placing the works together illustrates how jurists revisited the same scriptural materials under dramatically different political, imperial, and international conditions.

=====Jihad in a World of Sovereigns: Law, Violence, and Islam in the Bosnia Crisis===== [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/law-and-social-inquiry/article/jihad-in-a-world-of-sovereigns-law-violence-and-islam-in-the-bosnia-crisis/AE17B279722A72F15CFED6894F02FF1A | Darryl Li | Law & Social Inquiry | February 2016] Li examines Muslim foreign volunteers who traveled to Bosnia during the 1990s. Their actions combined transnational religious solidarity with the institutions of sovereign states, humanitarian organizations, international law, and local military structures, complicating the idea that modern jihad necessarily rejects the state system.

Jihadism, Political Violence, and Competing Strategies

=====The Islamic State in 2025: An Evolving Threat Facing a Waning Global Response===== [https://icct.nl/publication/islamic-state-2025-evolving-threat-facing-waning-global-response | International Centre for Counter-Terrorism Contributors | International Centre for Counter-Terrorism | July 11, 2025] The report explains how the Islamic State continued operating after losing most of its territorial holdings. Its regional branches combine local insurgencies with a global ideological identity, demonstrating how the rhetoric of jihad can be adapted to different political grievances, security vacuums, and conflicts.

=====Terror or Terrorism? Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Comparative Perspective===== [https://www.scielo.br/j/bpsr/a/4KtdTxmZGczgWKJH4qMfNBN/ | Aureo Toledo Gomes | Brazilian Political Science Review | 2018] This article compares the organizational histories, territorial strategies, political objectives, and uses of violence associated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Although both invoke jihadist ideology, their approaches to state-building, spectacle, recruitment, local alliances, and international attacks differ significantly.

=====Agency Misrecognition in International Violence: The Case of French Jihadism===== [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-international-studies/article/agency-misrecognition-in-international-violence-the-case-of-french-jihadism/A59BFDA8274AEAEE9C45A72A87872D2D | Thomas Lindemann | Review of International Studies | 2018] Based partly on interviews with prisoners accused of involvement with al-Qaeda or the Islamic State, the article explores how perceived exclusion and denial of political agency can contribute to jihadist identification. It does not excuse violence but examines how personal alienation becomes connected to narratives about global Muslim victimhood.

=====Fighting Ideology with Ideology: Islamism and the Challenge of ISIS===== [https://www.brookings.edu/articles/fighting-ideology-with-ideology-islamism-and-the-challenge-of-isis/ | Brookings Institution Contributors | Brookings Institution | January 5, 2017] The article considers how nonviolent Islamist movements responded to the Islamic State. Although these movements may share some religious vocabulary with jihadists, they frequently reject indiscriminate violence, unauthorized declarations of jihad, attacks on Muslim societies, and the Islamic State’s claim to exclusive political legitimacy.

Islamism, Salafism, and Jihadism: A Primer

[https://www.brookings.edu/articles/islamism-salafism-and-jihadism-a-primer/ | Shadi Hamid and Rashid Dar | Brookings Institution | July 15, 2016] This primer distinguishes Islamism, Salafism, and jihadism rather than treating them as interchangeable. Most Islamists pursue social or political transformation without embracing revolutionary violence, while jihadists promote armed struggle as the primary method for establishing their interpretation of Islamic government.

Exploiting Disorder: Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State

[https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/exploiting-disorder-al-qaeda-and-islamic-state | International Crisis Group | International Crisis Group | March 14, 2016] The report argues that jihadist organizations expand most effectively amid civil war, failed governance, state repression, and unresolved local conflicts. Their religious narratives gain political force when they attach themselves to community grievances, security needs, sectarian fears, and opposition to abusive governments.

What Most People Get Wrong About Political Islam

[https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-most-people-get-wrong-about-political-islam/ | Shadi Hamid | Brookings Institution | October 1, 2015] Hamid argues that Islamists should not automatically be classified as jihadists or terrorists. Many Islamist organizations participate in elections, provide social services, accept gradual political change, and operate within existing states, even while seeking a larger public role for Islamic law or values.

=====Comparing Al-Qaeda and ISIS: Different Goals, Different Targets===== [https://www.brookings.edu/articles/comparing-al-qaeda-and-isis-different-goals-different-targets/ | Daniel L. Byman | Brookings Institution | April 29, 2015] Byman compares al-Qaeda’s long-term strategy of attacking the “far enemy” with the Islamic State’s emphasis on controlling territory, declaring a caliphate, and confronting nearby governments and communities. Their rivalry reveals competing political interpretations of global jihad rather than a unified militant movement.

The Strengths and Weaknesses of Jihadist Ideology

[https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-strengths-and-weaknesses-of-jihadist-ideology/ | Rüdiger Lohlker and contributors | Combating Terrorism Center at West Point | September 24, 2010] The article analyzes jihadist claims that armed struggle offers the only authentic response to injustice and Muslim political decline. It also identifies ideological weaknesses, including attacks on Muslims, disputes over authority, unrealistic political programs, sectarian conflict, and contradictions between promised justice and actual violence.

Jihad, Colonialism, and Anticolonial Resistance

Between Anti-Colonial Resistance and Colonial Genocide

[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03086534.2025.2578214 | Nicola Perugini | Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History | 2025] The article examines how colonial governments have blurred distinctions between anticolonial resistance and indiscriminate violence. It considers the political consequences of treating entire colonized populations as security threats and shows how the language used to describe resistance can legitimize extreme state violence.

=====Why Was Religion Such a Recurring Feature of Anti-Colonial Resistance?===== [https://qmhistoryjournal.wixsite.com/qmhj/post/why-was-religion-such-a-recurring-feature-of-anti-colonial-resistance | Queen Mary History Journal | Queen Mary History Journal | November 7, 2020] The article considers why religious ideas repeatedly appeared in anticolonial rebellions. Concepts such as jihad could provide a shared moral vocabulary, connect local conflicts to wider communities, legitimize resistance leaders, and mobilize populations whose political institutions had been disrupted by imperial rule.

Jihad as Anti-Colonial Resistance in India: 1831–1920s

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333711230_Jihad_as_Anti-Colonial_Resistance_in_India_1831-1920s | Tariq Rahman | Pakistan Journal of Historical Studies | August 21, 2019] Rahman traces changing interpretations of jihad from the movement of Sayyid Ahmad Barelvi through the anticolonial politics of the early twentieth century. Indian Muslims adapted classical doctrines to clandestine rebellion, the uprising of 1857, frontier resistance, and later mass nationalist mobilization.

Anticolonial Resistance in Morocco

[https://criticalmuslim.com/explore/issues/history/anticolonial-resistance-morocco | Various Authors | Critical Muslim | n.d.] This historical discussion examines the importance of Islamic institutions, tribal alliances, religious authority, and jihad in Moroccan resistance to European rule. It argues that anticolonial jihad should be understood within local struggles over land, sovereignty, social organization, and foreign domination rather than reduced to religious fanaticism.

Historical Meanings and Classical Interpretations

Examining the Concept of Jihad

[https://blogs.kcl.ac.uk/kslr/files/2018/12/STRIFE_KSLR_06_GHAZI_87_100.pdf | Azeem Ibrahim and contributors | Strife Journal, King’s College London | 2018] This study surveys greater and lesser jihad and discusses the legal restrictions traditionally placed on armed struggle. It emphasizes that military jihad was historically governed by debates over legitimate authority, defensive necessity, treatment of civilians, parental consent, proportionality, and the protection of noncombatants.

Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought and History

[https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/62249/chapter/551408107 | Asma Afsaruddin | Oxford Academic | March 3, 2016] Jihad has never possessed a single, universally fixed meaning. Its basic Qur’anic sense involves striving or exertion, while Muslim scholars have applied it to moral discipline, religious teaching, social reform, defense of the community, armed combat, and resistance to oppression. The chapter explains how political and social circumstances shaped interpretations of both jihad and martyrdom.

=====Michael Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practice===== [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-middle-east-studies/article/michael-bonner-jihad-in-islamic-history-doctrines-and-practice-princeton-nj-princeton-university-press-2006-pp-224-2295-cloth/E5E27298F65B26CE8D3C712BD3771557 | William E. Shepard | International Journal of Middle East Studies | August 1, 2008] This review evaluates Bonner’s account of jihad as a changing historical institution rather than an unchanging command. It highlights the relationships among warfare, generosity, religious merit, state authority, frontier societies, and the construction of Muslim communal identity.

Understanding History’s Seven Stages of Jihad

[https://ctc.westpoint.edu/understanding-historys-seven-stages-of-jihad/ | Raymond Ibrahim | Combating Terrorism Center at West Point | December 3, 2007] The article distinguishes several uses of jihad, including struggle against personal wrongdoing, verbal or intellectual advocacy, material support, and armed conflict. Although its interpretive framework is contested, it illustrates how different meanings have been selected and reorganized in modern arguments about Islamic history and militant ideology.

Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practice

[https://nes.princeton.edu/publications/jihad-islamic-history-doctrines-and-practice | Michael Bonner | Princeton University | 2006] Michael Bonner examines the development of jihad during the formative centuries of Islam. He challenges attempts to define jihad exclusively as either warfare or peaceful spiritual striving, showing instead how religious devotion, frontier warfare, charity, political authority, and communal identity interacted in historical practice.

Jihad: Holy or Unholy War?

[https://www.unaoc.org/repository/Esposito_Jihad_Holy_Unholy.pdf | John L. Esposito | United Nations Alliance of Civilizations | n.d.] Esposito explains that jihad literally refers to effort or struggle and can include personal moral improvement, social activism, intellectual work, and armed defense. He also examines how rulers, revolutionaries, governments, and militant organizations have selectively emphasized military interpretations to legitimize political projects.