Jihadism (also
jihadist movement,
jihadi movement and variants) is a 21st-century
neologism found in the
Western languages to describe
Islamist militant movements perceived as a military movement "rooted in Islam" and "existentially threatening" to
the West. The term "jihadism" was coined in the 2000s and mostly used to cover Islamic
insurgency and
Islamic terrorism since that time, but it has also been extended to cover both
Mujahideen guerilla warfare and Islamic terrorism with an
international scope since it arose in the 1980s, since the 1990s substantially represented by the
al-Qaeda network.