How Terrorists Are Creating a New Language

Unfortunately, I have uncovered something disturbing.

The local jihadis have been cautious since December 2015, when their leader Istiak Alamgir was arrested. They no longer run dawah (proselytisation) street-stalls, and they no longer rant at passers-by through megaphones.

But their recalcitrance hasn’t abated. They now consider themselves agents of the Islamic State, or Isis, and have formed online communication channels with foreign jihadis all over the world.

What I have discovered is that the way they communicate is changing, and if we are going to stop them, we must understand how it is changing.

The vast majority of Tawheed Network members originate from the Mirapur region of Kashmir. As a result, they have a particular hatred of the British Empire, whom they ultimately blame for the region’s problems. They despise the fact that they speak the same words as their kuffar (infidel) hosts, seeing it as a sign of colonial domestication. But, unfortunately for them, their parents raised them to speak English as a first language, and they are thus inept at their native “Islamic” languages of Urdu and Arabic.

The transition from “chocolate” to “moony” within less than a decade illustrates an important point: Jihadese is rapidly evolving, and therefore actively resists efforts by normal English speakers to comprehend it.

Over the years, jihadis have added more and more obscure terms to their vocabulary, deviating further and further from standard English. At the same time, technological innovations have increasingly enabled them to spread their argot across the world, so that it now threatens to become a universal terrorist language.

Here is a simple example of how Jihadese is used on Twitter:

The above tweet is a very basic use of Jihadese, mostly composed of standard English. It makes use of the common slang word “chilling” (relaxing), and uses only three Arabic words, “fardh” (obligation), “salah” (prayer), and “hijrah” (migration). However, there is another layer to this last word. While in standard Arabic, “hijrah” refers to migration in general, and the journey Muhammad took from Mecca to Medina in particular, in Jihadese the word means “joining Isis”.

But it’s not just slang and foreign words that set Jihadese apart from common English. The argot also uses unique euphemisms, such as “cake-baking” to refer to bomb-making:

What makes Jihadese such a slippery language is the diversity of its roots. Someone wishing to understand it needs to be fluent in several different vernaculars, from underworld slang to Quranic metaphor.

Here’s another tweet, showing a more evolved and complex use of Jihadese:

A normal English speaker will have trouble with this sentence, due to its use of Arabic, Internet slang, and oblique terms like “Dream I as a greenbird flying”. Let’s go through it:

“Jihad fard ‘ayn” is Arabic for “combat is compulsory”. “Irja” is a word used for the “quietist” Salafi belief that one can go to paradise without doing what the Qur’an says, as long as one believes in its basic message. “AK” is an abbreviation of “AK-47 machine gun”. “Shahada” means “martyrdom”.

The term replaced the original Jihadese term for martyr, “72”— a reference to the belief that martyrs are awarded 72 virgins in paradise.

So with all the terms translated, we can render @JustMuhajirah’s tweet as:

Clearly, statements in Jihadese tend to be more succinct than their English counterparts. This concision lends itself well to social media, particularly Twitter. Not only can a lot be said with it in 140 characters, but its abstract nature means it can be said without triggering word filters or flagging.

To offer an example, this tweet has remained online for nearly a year, even though if interpreted correctly it glorifies martyrdom, a clear breach of Twitter’s terms and conditions:

An example is the word “rafidah” (“rejecter”). This is a derogation, with strong connotations of treachery. It is also the word that UK terror groups like the Tawheed Network use for “Shia”. Therefore, it is impossible in Jihadese to refer to Shia without implying that they are treacherous.

This weaponised vocabulary is the medium by which many extremists now contemplate and communicate. Its purpose is deception and indoctrination. It is constantly growing, mutating in meaning, becoming ever more alien.

If we are going to defeat the jihadis, we must understand how their language is diverging from ours on social media and on the streets of places like Luton.

If we don’t, then soon enough, we will hear them speak another language, one that everyone in the world understands all too well.

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