Debate over Tablighi Jamaat's alleged ties to terrorism

While low-level intelligence analysts, in Afghanistan and Guantanamo, have written justifications for the continued detention of Guantanamo captives based on alleged associations between the detainee and Tablighi Jamaat, other organs of the United States government, such as the United States Institute of Peace, take a more benign view of Tablighi.^[1]

Bazer Azmy, a Law Professor at Seton Hall University, and one of Guantanamo captive Murat Kurnaz's lawyers, asked three American professors of Religion to write letters explaining to Kurnaz's Administrative Review Board the non-violent and apolitical roots of the Tabligh movement.

• According to Qamar-ul Huda, a Professor of Islamic Studies and Comparative Religion at Boston College, wrote that: “From the very beginning the Jama’at al-Tablighi has deliberately distanced itself from politics, political activities, and political controversies.”^[2]
• According to Barbara D. Metcalf, Director of the Center for South Asian Studies and the Alice Freeman Palmer Professor of History at the University of Michigan: “I will also attempt to explain why it is implausible to believe that the Tablighis support terrorism or are in any way affiliated with other terrorist or ‘jihadi’ movements such as the Taliban or Al Pedal's

.”^[3]

• According to Jamal J. Ellias. Professor of Religion at Amherst College: “I must emphasize this last point, that the Tablighis formally and actively believe that traveling to engage in missionary activity fully discharges any religious obligation to engage in Jihad.”^[4]

A report entitled "Islamist terrorism in the Sahel: Fact or Fiction?", by the International Crisis Group described the Tablighi^[13]: