IT IS never about the money, at least not to start with. For the jihadist groups that have, in the past decade, pocketed several hundred million dollars in ransom for the release of kidnapped infidels, there are always other justifications. Their captives are spies, they say, or prisoners of war, or bargaining chips for the exchange of “hostages” unjustly held in Western prisons.

The motive changes according to circumstance. Sometimes the unlucky captives are insurance against attack or, worse, a target for retribution. In a grisly video of James Foley, an American journalist IS recently beheaded in Syria, the group sought to justify the atrocity as a reprisal for America’s bombing of IS in Iraq. It also threatened to kill more American hostages unless the bombing ceased.

IS’s kidnapping of Westerners reached its height in 2013. The group amassed several dozen Western hostages; precise numbers are not known since some families prefer not to disclose detail. Some hostages were taken by other groups and sold on to IS.

Yet it was only earlier this year, after rival rebel groups in Syria turned their guns on IS, that it began to demand payment for the release of Westerners in order to raise funds; IS had long and lucratively done so by nabbing local Syrians and Iraqis. It has netted multi-million-euro ransoms from several European governments. And it was said to have belatedly demanded $132m as the price for freeing Mr Foley, whom it had held since November, 2012.

IS is hardly the only group in Syria to kidnap for money. But the international focus on it may push some other groups to change tactics. It was perhaps a hope of distinguishing itself as “legitimate” that prompted Jabhat al-Nusra, a Syrian group opposed to IS but ostensibly loyal to al-Qaeda, to release Peter Theo Curtis, another American journalist held hostage for two years, on August 24th.

That said, the course to criminality has been well marked by the al-Qaeda mother-ship, for whose official franchises in Yemen, north Africa and Somalia kidnapping has become the main source of revenue. According to the New York Times, those three groups alone may have netted as much as $125m in ransom since 2008. Yet that still pales in comparison with the $400m that the UN and World Bank estimate Somali pirates have totted up in the past eight years. Most of them have been inspired by business rather than belief.