The outbursts of violence, clashes and strife between Sunnis and Shi'ites in the wake of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, had two important repercussions for modern Jihadism. First, it catalyzed a new jihadist wave of fighters and increased the militancy of the homegrown Sunni Arab insurgency which played a key role in creating alliances between local Sunni insurgents and transnational Salafi jihadists, under the aegis of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM), the predecessor of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). Secondly, through its blend of chauvinistic Sunni Arab nationalism and Sunni extremist aversion towards both western colonialism and Shi'ism, the emergence of this new wave of jihadism served as an impetus for an explosive spawning of a new theology of jihad held together by two components: (a) politics of friends and enemies (wala’ wa-l bara’) and (b) the sanctions and the moral basis of the Islamic body politics (hud?d, qas?s, ta`z?r, enslavement, etc.). Taking these two components into account, the purpose of this paper is as follows: first, to show how this new theology of jihad helped to provide much of the immediate framework within which a transnational Sunni - rather than PanIslamic - identity was promulgated; secondly, to outline the most salient features of this overtly sectarian current found in the new theology of jihad with focus on its ideology of resistance and khil?fa-building project; try to trace the roots of these new components, both by showing how this theology of jihad reconceptualize classical discussions of takfir and also to show what rhetorical means this theology uses in order to present these innovations as firmly anchored in tradition; to attempt to explain why this theology develops at this particular time and place, and thereby contribute some further methodological reflections on the changing nature of Jihadi-Salafism; to challenge the relatively widespread paradigm that the 'Islamist Ideology' or the 'Jihadist Ideology' promote certain sets of doctrines in isolation from their surroundings, and to suggest that jihadist theology always develops in a changing context.