Homegrown Jihadi Movement

Who are the Homegrown Jihadis?

Homegrown jihadis are generally Internet-based enthusiasts and amateur operatives, and they are thus viewed as being significantly less professional than foreign jihadi operatives, who are often formally trained and battle hardened. By contrast, however, homegrown jihadis in the West tend to be loners or part of small groups of like-minded individuals.

Because homegrown jihadis emerge from domestic contexts, they have a familiarity with language, customs, and locations that makes them hard for law enforcement to spot, at least compared to foreign operatives. Generally, homegrown jihadis receive little to no formal training from external sources. In the rare cases where they do successfully travel to a foreign training location before returning back to their country of residence, training is often rushed and incomplete.

While most homegrown jihadis limit their activities to passive support for al Qaeda, including [Page 263]Internet-based dialog with like-minded individuals, consumption of jihadi propaganda, and occasionally conducting activism, some do go operational. In those cases where homegrown jihadis have made it to an operational stage, they have historically done so employing low-tech means, and they have generally failed to conduct attacks that are comparable in terms of lethality or media coverage with those perpetrated by more formal organizations.

Critiques of the Term

The use of the word homegrown is meant to focus attention on the indigenous nature of this kind of extremist ideology. The term highlights the fact that, as opposed to terrorists who infiltrate Western countries from non-Western countries, homegrown jihadis radicalize, mobilize, and attack from within. However, the phrase “homegrown jihadi movement” is not uniformly accepted as an accurate or useful descriptor. Critics of the phrase argue that few terrorist attacks dubbed as “homegrown” ever emerge entirely from within national borders. For example, individuals may have used the Internet to access ideological content developed by foreign nationals in order to become radicalized. They may receive funding, advice, or orders from foreign sources affiliated or inspired by groups like al Qaeda.

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