As all academics know, defining the subject you study is very important and often complicated. This is obviously no different in the study of jihadis, where terms such as “radical Muslims”, “Muslim extremists”, “Jihadi-Salafis”, “takfiris” and even “Islamo-fascists” are often used to describe Muslims engaging in violence against others. Such terms are based on criteria set by outsiders, sometimes resulting in terms that are crude, imprecise and/or used to describe people who strongly differ from one another. Others take the approach of simply listening to what the people that one’s research focuses on – in this case jihadis – call themselves. This often yields widely divergent and biased answers that are frequently ill-suited to be used by academics. Terms such as “Muslims”, “mujahidun” and “ahl al-Sunna wa-l-jama’a“, for example, are rather general and, more importantly, are also claimed by Muslims who have nothing to do with al-Qa’ida whatsoever. Defining one’s