Glossary of words used by French-speaking jihadists

We have made a glossary of words used by French-speaking jihadists. Its purpose was to fill an operational gap that we perceived in particular during the implementation in detention of the AMAL program, whose goal was the prevention of jihadist recidivism in jail. The Francophone potential users, for whom this glossary has been specifically designed, are: prison staff in the broadest sense, probation officers, intelligence analysts. The tool consists of an alphabetical list of about 150 items with simple and understandable definitions. The aim here was not to be exhaustive, particularly concerning jihadist theology, but rather to be practical and quick, taking into account for example the constraints of detention (no computer connection for example).

This tool captures the following aspects :

– Jihadist and Salafist theology (taking into account certain associated concepts and elements, although often with different meanings),
– Terrorist operational vocabulary,
– Vocabulary of detention (pejorative nickname given to penitentiary, judicial and police personnel by radical islamic detainees), and physical or verbal aggression;
– Vocabulary of everyday life (interjection, specific slang), etc.

It uses the following semantic fields:

-Classical Arabic,
-Maghrebi dialects, (insofar as the majority of French-speaking jihadists belong to this linguistic community, including in an intergenerational manner),
-French-Maghrebi spelling (Franco-Arabic mixing, francization of words of Arabic origin, word inversion), etc.