Abu-Rabi was a child of the world. He was a Palestinian born in Nazareth in 1956; he was educated at Roman Catholic schools on the West Bank. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree from Birzeit University in 1980. He then moved to the United States, getting a Masters of Arts degree in political science from the University of Cincinnati in 1982. And then he went to Temple University in Pennsylvania for a further Master’s degree in religious studies. He remained at Temple University for his PhD studies. He obtained his doctorate in Islamic Studies in 1987 where he worked with Dr. Leonard Swidler. He held both Israeli and US passports; he worked with Christians, Jews, and Muslims. He spoke a multitude of languages – Arabic, English, Heb-rew, Urdu, and, at the time of his death, was working on Turkish. Among his many honors, he was appointed in 2006 the Senior Fulbright Scholar in Singapore and Indonesia at the Institute of De-fence and Strategic Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.