The rapid evolution and diffusion of the Internet led to diversification in production and consumption of media content. On the one hand, this phenomenon affected what is known as traditional or legacy media, which have been forced to adapt to the demands of a new audience; on the other, it provided a new outlet for alternative forms of content production, which proved particularly fruitful, especially for groups promoting political mobilization. In 2010, the Malahem Media Foundation, a media outlet affiliated with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), initiated the publication of Inspire, a periodical magazine published digitally and circulated across the internet in PDF format. The magazine presents itself as published by the Muslim community for the Muslim community, and its declared purpose is to promote the global fight against the (perceived) enemies of Islam framing it as jihad in defense of the umma. Until recently, academic research on Inspire has had a narrow scope of inquiry focused on the jihadi component of the magazine, while overlooking other components that constitute the worldview endorsed by the magazine. This paper explores the ways in which the authors of Inspire construct and present their worldview to their readers using the umma as the analytical paradigm. Through merging Benedict Anderson’s theoretical framework of imagined communities (1991) with Susan Opotow’s theoretical framework of moral exclusion (1990), this paper analyses how Inspire discursively constructs the boundaries of the Muslim community, thus creating what I call an ‘imagined moral umma (community)’. I define the Imagined Moral Umma as an imagined community whose boundaries are determined by the moral standards of its members, thus making religious affiliation (i.e. being Muslim) a necessary but not sufficient condition to be part of this umma. By engaging in qualitative discourse analysis of selected articles in Inspire magazine, this paper shows that 1) the boundaries of Inspire’s umma are flexible, for inclusion and exclusion from the Imagined Moral Umma are dependent upon historical contingencies; 2) moral exclusion becomes the paradigm for justifying violence against Muslims, thus allowing the authors of the magazine to deflect the accusation of being a “takfiri group” (a group that utilizes the accusation of apostasy against its enemies). As such, the flexibility of the Imagined Moral Umma allows the authors of Inspire to articulate an ideological shift from a chiefly anti-Western propaganda to an anti-imperialist rhetoric, which directly affects the way in which jihad is promoted.