Ibrahim Abu-Rabi‘ (1956–2011) was an accomplished scholar of political Islam with numerous peer-reviewed articles and nineteen books, as well as translations of books in English into Urdu, Turkish, Arabic, Bosnian, and German as well as translations from Arabic into English. His intellectual work on religion was carried out from within the academy, out in the public square and in connection with religious communities from the Azores to Yemen. In this article David Goa and Norton Mezvinsky provide a brief overview of the challenges Abu-Rabi‘ faced both within a Canadian University and in the broader Muslim community. They reflect on their own experience of working with Abu-Rabi‘ as a public intellectual willing and able to engage the relevance of religious life as he built strong relationships across diverse sectors locally, nationally and internationally.