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“Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This, too, is meaningless.”
- Ecclesiastes 5:10 (not Torah, but Hebrew Bible — Ketuvim)
“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”
- 1 Timothy 6:10, New International Version (NIV)
“The mutual rivalry for piling up of worldly things diverts you until you visit the graves.”
We are warned: the love of money is the root of much evil, even among those who cloak it in holiness. Beware the man who tweets Bible verses while billing the orphans. He’s got one hand on his rosary and the other in your wallet. Even his halo’s tax-deductible.
Woe to the one who prays publicly yet hides greed beneath his robe. He counts the coins of the poor and calls them blessings from the Lord.
Surely, God is not deceived by fine garments or eloquent tongues.
I made up those verses in the paragraph above. But the point stands.
Even in the enlightened 21st century, watching a rogues’ gallery of bearded fanatics—ISIS, Boko Haram, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, with cameos from Abu Sayyaf, the IRGC, and the Afghan Taliban— we assume that a fanatical, perverted religion drives them, but we should dig a little deeper.
Many are pushing terror for money, and it's no side gig.
These chaps, draped in the sanctimonious robes of Islamic fervour, have stumbled upon truth as old as dirt: chaos pays, and death’s a splendid business model.
Forget the bleating about paradise and martyrdom; the real game here is coin—piles of it skimmed from the rubble of shattered lives, Muslim or otherwise.
Are they brainwashing the dim and desperate, whipping them into a frenzy of jihad so the bosses can rake in the loot? You bet they are—Hamas skims Gaza’s smuggling rackets like a mafia don, and these outfits don’t bat an eye at the body count; Westerners or their flock can be damned.
Is it less about faith and more about filling the coffers?
Their holy scriptures tell them that what they are doing is wrong; Muhammad is reputed to have given away most of his wealth. The terrorist racket would make Heath Ledger’s Joker nod approvingly, counting his money and acknowledging, “Some people just want to watch the world burn1.”
But do the greed-heads at the top even believe in what they peddle, or are they just monetising the gullibility of the faithful? God knows.
Several top Hamas leaders are reported to be extremely wealthy. Estimates place Khaled Mashal’s net worth at $2.6 billion, Ismail Haniyeh’s around $4 million to $5 million, and others in the tens of millions.
ISIS: The Caliphate’s Cash Machine
Start with the Islamic State, that garish experiment in medieval cosplay gone feral. ISIS didn’t just conquer swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014—they turned terror into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise. Oil smuggling? Check—$500 million yearly from pilfered fields, sold to anyone with a tanker and no scruples.2
Extortion rackets? Naturally—taxing locals under the pious guise of “zakat” to the tune of $1 million monthly in Mosul alone.
Kidnapping? A goldmine—ransom payments from desperate families and governments netted them $20-45 million annually.³ And don’t forget the antiquities trade—looting Syria’s past for a cool $100 million3, flogging relics to Western collectors who’d rather not ask questions. The caliphate’s accountants weren’t exactly amateurs; they kept a tight ledger.
Are the foot soldiers—the cannon fodder chanting “Allahu Akbar” as they detonate—reaping this bounty? Hardly. They’re unwashed.
A friend of mine, Mahmoud, a successful Muslim restauranter in partnership with a Jewish woman, had one word for them when I mentioned Hamas: Donkeys.
Donkeys. Most of us don’t have much donkey experience. We just know them as the horse’s stupid cousin. But Mahmoud’s expression, “donkey,” hits on the classic version of ‘stupid’—lacking wisdom or understanding—hard-headed in a self-destructive way and acting without religious insight or compassion.
That man packed a lot of wisdom into a one-word answer.
The uneducated, brainwashed into believing 72 virgins await, while the likes of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (before his 2019 drone-assisted exit) lounged in relative luxury, skimming the profits.
Historian Ibn Khaldun, that sharp-eyed 14th-century observer, might’ve pegged it: “The life of man is of no greater duration than the breath of his nostrils, but greed makes it eternal.”4These top dogs don’t care if Muslims die—civilian deaths in Raqqa were just collateral for the cash flow.
Like the Joker, they revel in the burn, but the bank balance keeps them grinning.
Boko Haram: Nigeria’s Nihilist ATM
Next, Boko Haram, Nigeria’s homegrown nightmare, proves terror’s profitability isn’t limited to desert caliphates. Since 2009, they’ve turned the Lake Chad basin into a slaughterhouse, and how the naira (Nigerian currency) flows.
Kidnapping’s their forte—the 2014 Chibok schoolgirls nab fetched $18 million in ransom, a tidy sum for a gang of illiterate thugs.5
Cattle rustling? A rustic twist—$11 million annually from pilfered herds, sold to fund more AK-47s. Bank heists and village extortion? Another $5-10 million yearly, shaking down locals too terrified to say no.
Leader Abubakar Shekau—before his 2021 demise in a rival spat—didn’t exactly live in a mud hut; his lieutenants drove SUVs while the rank-and-file starved.
The foot soldiers? Poor sods, often coerced or deluded, dying for a cause they barely grasp while the brass pocket the proceeds.
Some scholars have said these terrorists are not of Islam.
But Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi once thundered, “If everyone who defends his land and dies defending his sacred symbols is considered a terrorist, then I wish to be at the forefront of the terrorists. And I pray to Allah if that is terrorism, then O Allah make me live as a terrorist, die as a terrorist, and be raised up with the terrorists.”6—he certainly didn’t flinch at Muslim casualties; the 2011 Abuja UN bombing killed 23, mostly locals, and they shrugged.
It’s chaos for cash, not conviction—some just want to see it burn, but the top dogs want the profits from the ashes.
Lashkar-e-Tayyiba: Kashmir’s Cash Cow
Now, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), Pakistan’s polished jihadist export, has been wreaking havoc in Kashmir and beyond since the late 1980s. Funded partly by ISI handouts—estimated at $50 million annually in the 2000s—they’ve turned terror into a slick operation.¹⁰
The 2008 Mumbai attacks? A $300,000 job, netting prestige and donations—charities like Jamaat-ud-Dawa (a front) raked in $5 million post-attack from sympathetic donors.¹¹ Smuggling and hawala networks? Another $10-20 million yearly, laundering cash through Dubai’s back alleys.¹²
Leader Hafiz Saeed, despite his 2020 terrorism financing rap, lived cushily—his lieutenants weren’t exactly fasting for the cause.
The grunts? Poor lads from Punjab’s slums fed tales of martyrdom, dying in droves while Saeed’s crew banked the loot. They don’t care about Muslim deaths—2008’s 166 casualties included plenty of their faith, collateral for the cause.
Historian Bernard Lewis quipped, “The love of money is the root of much evil, even among those who cloak it in holiness.”¹³ LeT’s top brass prove it—burning’s fine, as long as the cash keeps rolling.
Abu Sayyaf, IRGC, Afghan Taliban: The Profitable Sideshows
Don’t overlook the bit players—Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines turns kidnapping into a cottage industry, pulling $10 million from ransoms like the 2015 Samal Island haul. 7
The IRGC? Iran’s terror puppeteers bankroll Hezbollah and others with $700 million yearly from oil and sanctions-busting—commanders live like shahs while proxies bleed.¹⁵ The Afghan Taliban? Opium’s their game—$400 million annually from poppy fields, funding Hibatullah Akhundzada’s rustic empire while foot soldiers dodge drones.¹⁶
Greed’s on the songsheet—chaos and death is just the chorus.
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