mujahideen, in its broadest sense, Muslims who fight on behalf of the faith or the Muslim community (ummah). Its Arabic singular, mujāhid, was not an uncommon personal name from the early Islamic period onward.
The term did not gain popular currency as a collective or plural noun referring to “holy warriors” until the 18th century in India, where it became associated with Islamic revivalism. During this period, modernist Muslim thinkers such as Shāh Walī Allāh attributed the decline of the Mughal Empire to the decadence of its contemporary society. Though his primary concern was the revival of Islamic society, he considered Muslim rule necessary for that revival to prosper. Thus, in revivalist rhetoric, Muslims who resisted the expansion of the Maratha, Jat, and Sikh armies into Muslim areas could be considered defenders of Islamdom and, therefore,mujāhidīn. In the 19th century the term became increasingly identified with the militant revivalist movement of Sayyid Aḥmad Baralawī (Brelvi), whose self-styled mujāhidīn fought both Sikh expansion and British paramountcy in India.
The term continued to be used throughout India for Muslim resistance to colonialism and the British raj, but in the 20th century the term was used most commonly in Iran and Afghanistan. In Iran the Mojāhedin-e Khalq (“Mujahideen of the People”), a group combining Islamic and Marxist ideologies, engaged in a long-term guerrilla war against the leadership of the Islamic republic. The name was most closely associated, however, with the mujahideen in Afghanistan, a coalition of guerrilla groups in Afghanistan that opposed the invading Soviet forces and eventually toppled the Afghan communist government during the Afghan War (1978–92). Rival factions thereafter fell out among themselves, precipitating the rise of the Taliban and the opposing Northern Alliance. Like the term jihad—to which it is lexicographically connected—the name has been used rather freely, both in the press and by Islamic militants themselves, and often has been used to refer to any Muslim groups engaged in hostilities with non-Muslims or even with secularized Muslim regimes.