Ibrahim was born in London in 1954, attending the first CND marches with his parents later in that decade. He left school aged 17 to travel in search of alternative philosophies, later enrolling at the Claymont Academy for Continuous Education for a program of full-time study of the Gurdjieff ‘Work’, a syncretic system of esoteric thought and practice, in the Blue Ridge mountains of West Virginia.

Following his formal conversion to Islam, he studied philosophy at the University of East Anglia, going on to qualify as a secondary school teacher in Cambridge. During the ensuing years, he undertook postgraduate studies firstly in action research and later in theology. It is this combination of philosophy, theology and education that have guided his academic and professional interests for the last 30 years and he is currently pursuing a PhD in the area where these may share common hermeneutic principles.