Salafi jihadism, also known as revolutionary Salafism or jihadist Salafism, is a religious-political Sunni Islamist ideology that seeks to establish a global caliphate, characterized by the advocacy of "physical" (military) jihadist attacks on non-Muslim and (takfired) Muslim targets. The Salafist interpretation of sacred Islamic texts is "in their most literal, traditional sense", which adherents claim will bring about the return to "true Islam".The original use of the term "jihadist Salafists" (also "Salafi-jihadi" or "Salafist jihadis") came from French political scientist Gilles Kepel to refer to international volunteers of the jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan who had come from around the world to fight for Islam against Marxist forces in Afghanistan and had lost the American-Saudi funding and interest after the Soviet forces had withdrawn, but wanted to continue waging jihad elsewhere. Their original jihad was against an aggressive anti-religious power (Soviet Union and its Marxist allies), attempting to take over a Muslim region (Afghanistan) - and had been enthusiastically supported by large numbers of Muslims including governments. However, isolated from their national and social class origins and seeking to "rationalize" their "existence and behavior", some Arab Afghan volunteers expanded the targets of their jihad to include the United States (whom they "perceived as the greatest enemy of the faith", despite having supported and armed the Afghan Mujahideen), and various governments of Muslim-majority countries - whom they perceived as apostates from Islam.Jihadist and Salafist elements of "hybrid" ideology developed by international volunteers ("Arab-Afghan" Mujahideen) had not been joined previously because mainstream Salafis, (dubbed by some Western commentators as "good Salafis"), had mostly adhered to political quietism - eschewing political activities and partisan allegiances, viewing them as potentially divisive for the broader Muslim community and as a distraction from the studying and practicing of Islam. Prominent Quietist Salafi scholars have denounced doctrines of Salafi jihadism as Bid'ah ("innovation") and "heretical", strongly forbidding Muslims from participating or assisting in any armed underground activity against ruling governments. Jihadist salafists often dismiss the quietist scholars as "'sheikist" traitors, portraying them as palace scholars worried about the patronage of "the oil sheiks of the Arabian peninsula" rather than pure Islam, and contend that they are not dividing the Muslim community because, (in their view), the rulers of Muslim-majority countries and other self-proclaimed Muslims they attack are not actually part of the community having deviated from Islam and become apostates or false Muslims.Early ideologues of the movement were Arab Afghan veterans of the Afghan jihad: Abu Qatada al-Filistini, the (naturalized Spanish) Syrian Abu Musab, Mustapha Kamel known as Abu Hamza al-Masri, etc. The jihadist ideology of Qutbism has been identified variously as the ideological foundation of the movement, a closely related Islamist ideology, or a variety of revolutionary Salafism.In the 1990s, extremist jihadists of the al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya were active in the terrorist attacks on police, government officials, and tourists in Egypt, and the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria was a principal extremist group in the Algerian Civil War. The most infamous jihadist-Salafist terrorist action is considered to be the September 11 attacks against the United States perpetrated by al-Qaeda in 2001. While Salafism had next-to-no presence in Europe in the 1980s, Salafi jihadists had by the mid-2000s 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, the breakdown of state control in Libya and Syria in 2014, and the U.S. retreat from Afghanistan in 2021. Source: Wikipedia (en)