Abdeen Jabara was born the youngest of seven children to immigrant parents in Mancelona, Michigan. After graduating form the University of Michigan in 1852, where he held a Regents Alumni Scholarship, he attended Wayne State University's Law School and earned his law degree in 1965. He is also a graduate of the Institute for World Affairs in Salisbury, Connecticut.

He opened a private practice the following year in Detroit, Michigan, and served as a cooperating attorney with the Detroit Metropolitan branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU.) In this capacity, he successfully challenged a property ownership requirement for candidates to public office in a Detroit suburb

A renowned civil rights attorney, he founded the Law Student's Civil Rights Research Council during his days at Wayne State. He is a life member of the ACLU, a founder and past president of the Association of Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG), and served on the Board of Directors of the Emmanuel Community House in Detroit for eight years.

During the mid 19780's, Mr. Jabara was instrumental in exposing the Nixon administration's "Operation Boulder" program against Arabs and Arab-Americans, which included deportations, surveillance, and harassment campaigns. He was directly involved in the issues, himself the victim of a coordinated campaign of government surveillance. In 1985, he finally won a long legal battle that forced the FBI to destroy the records it had maintained concerning his exercise of activities protected by the First Amendment. He has written numerous articles and lectured extensively at universities around the U.S. on civil rights and foreign policy issues. He is the author of a monograph on Armistice Law and co-edited a book on Middle East politics.

Mr. Jabara has been an active member of the executive committee of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) since its founding in 1980. In July 1986, the board unanimously elected him president of the 18,000 member origination, the largest grass-roots Arab-American organization dedicated to defending the political rights and promoting the cultural heritage of he more than three million Americans of Arab descent. He closed his law office in Detroit after twenty years of practice and move to the nation's capitol to assume his new position with ADC.

Mr. Jabara served as president of the ADC until 1990.

In 1994 he moved to New York City to work as defense counsel in an eight-month federal criminal prosecution after which he was admitted to the New York State Bar. He now lives and practices law in New York City. Since September 11th he has frequently spoken out on behalf of immigrants detained after the World Trade Towers incident. He is married to Holly Maguigan who teaches at New York University School of Law. Like so many of the other principals involved in the Rahman Bridge and Tunnel Trial he was approached by the FBI and asked to become a confidential source. At the urging of his wife he agreed and has been supplying the Bureau with information on an ongoing basis.