Barbara D. Metcalf

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Barbara D. Metcalf is an American University Professor. Metcalf is the Director of the Center for South Asian Studies and the Alice Freeman Palmer Professor of History at the University of Michigan.^[1]

Metcalf was called on to write to the Administrative Review Boards held at the Guantanamo Bay detainment camps.^[1] 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. Metcalf addressed the benevolent nature of Tablighi pilgrimages. She wrote: “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 Qaeda.”