Jamal J. Ellias

Jamal J. Elias is the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

He was called on to write to the Administrative Review Boards held at the Guantanamo Bay detainment camps. The Boards were authorized to recommend whether Guantanamo captives should continue to be held in extrajudicial detention. One of the justifications offered for the continued detention of over three dozen of the Guantanamo captives was that they had participated in the activities of a Pakistani Islamic missionary group named Tablighi Jamaat.

Elias wrote that Tablighi was a peaceful group, and that, in particular, one of the tenets of the movement was that participation on a Tabligh mission was a valid substitute for participation in Jihad.