Dr. Khalid Abu Ras is a research fellow of the Kogod Research Center at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

He holds a doctorate in Islamic studies and Arabic literature from Bar Ilan University. The subject of his doctoral thesis was the Jerusalem Sufi Sheikh Muhammad Hashem al-Badadi (died 1995). This research was written under the guidance of Prof. Binyamin Abrahamov in the Department of Arabic Studies and Prof. Avraham Elkayim in the Department of Jewish Thought. Dr. Abu Ras also wrote a dissertation on the subject of God’s likeness in Al-Azali’s work.

He underwent religious education and Sufi-spiritual initiation by the Sufi Sheikh Muhammad Hashem al-Badadi and the Sufi Sheikh Abd al-Salam Manasra, who is the head of the Sufi order of Tariqat al-Salam al-Qadiriya in Israel.

Dr. Abu Ras lectures on Sufism and contemporary Muslim thought at Bar Ilan University, and today he is a lecturer in Arabic language and literature at the Kay Academic College of Education in Beer Sheva.

He is married, father of four children, and a resident of the village of Ilot near Nazareth.