Ibrahim Abu-Rabi` is Professor of Islamic Studies, Co-Director of the Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary and co-editor of a scholarly journal, The Muslim World. He has a special interest in the study and practice of interfaith dialogue between the Islamic and Christian religious traditions. Dr. Abu-Rabi` specializes in issues of contemporary Islamic thought, particularly on religion and society, and mysticism. He is a Palestinian who was born in Nazareth, Galilee. Fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, he holds dual citizenship in the U. S. and Israel and has received degrees from Birzeit University (in Birzeit, West Bank, Palestine), the University of Cincinnati, and Temple University, Philadelphia.

Recently, Prof. Abu-Rabi` taught as a Fulbright Scholar at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore on “Nation-Building, Multiculturalism, Secularism and Religion in Contemporary Singapore.”

In his Saturday evening lecture, How to Mend a Broken World, Dr. Abu-Rabi` spoke on the theological and historical foundations of dialogue in Islam, and especially in relation to Christian-Muslim dialogue. “I will address the Qur’anic position and what major Muslim authors have had to say about dialogue and finally I will talk about concrete situations of dialogue between Muslims and Christians in the contemporary world.”

The Sunday morning lecture, Islam and Modernity, centered on the way Muslims have responded to modernity and the self-definition of Islam in the present time, including the subject of American Islam and how American Muslims have assimilated or rejected American concepts of modernity.

For more information about Ibrahim Abu-Rabi`, please visit http://macdonald.hartsem.edu/aburabi.htm