The word does not describe who they are. It describes what the speaker needs them to be.
Jihadis is the term Western media and governments apply to any Muslim who resists, fights, speaks out, or is simply accused of association with resistance movements. The word collapses an enormous range of human activity into a single category: terrorist. A man praying in a prison cell becomes a jihadi. A charity worker becomes a jihadi. A scholar becomes a jihadi. The label does not discriminate because it is not designed to. It is designed to criminalise.
The term operates as a tool of epistemic warfare. By assigning one word to every form of Muslim resistance or religious practice, the label removes the need for distinction. Context becomes irrelevant. Motivation becomes irrelevant. The act of labeling is the act of condemning. This is how a man who refuses to abandon his deen becomes indistinguishable from a man who commits violence in its name.
The reality behind the label is almost always more complex. The men described as jihadis in Western prisons are frequently political prisoners, advocates, or individuals caught in sweeping security architectures. CAGE, the UK-based advocacy organisation, has documented extensive cases of Muslim men detained without charge, subjected to torture, and labeled jihadis for activities that would be protected political speech in any other context.
The word serves the same function as the extremist label: it shuts down inquiry, validates repression, and makes it socially acceptable to deny rights to an entire category of people. The question is never what these men actually did. The question is why the label was sufficient to stop the conversation.