UNSECO, often complicit in, or actually instigating, the revisionist history of the Palestinian Authority has done it AGAIN.  Maimonides aka Rambam — of of  the foremost Jewish scholars since the days of Hillel and Shammai, is now…a Muslim scholar.
When I was studying at Oxford, the Jewish manuscript librarian showed me several samples of his writing. The fact that some was in Arabic, the lingua franca of the countries where he lived, doesn’t make him Muslim. It’s like saying Phillip Roth is a Christian because he writes in English.
Lastly, there ARE historical rumors that in order to escape besieged Spain, Rambam and his family were compelled to undergo a forced conversion to Islam. However, even if that were the case, he is no Muslim Scholar, as all his writings and work are Jewish.
A recent UNESCO report on science, Jewish physician and theologian Maimonides is classified as a Muslim named “Moussa ben Maimoun.†So the Rambam – for Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon – has been forced to “convert†to Islam by the UN’s revisionist historians.
During the Middle Ages, the French Inquisition confiscated and burned Maimonides’s books. From the elegant Parisian boulevards, UNESCO’s inquisitors are now following the same dreadful solution of rendering history and the Holy Land “Judenrein.”
More info about Unesco’s anti-Jewish work in this good article on YNET by  Giulio Meotti .
Great selection of modern and classic books waiting to be discovered. All free and available in most ereader formats. download free books https://www.philadelphia.edu.jo/library/directors-message-library
Great selection of modern and classic books waiting to be discovered. All free and available in most ereader formats. download free books https://www.philadelphia.edu.jo/library/directors-message-library
@ Haim Watzman
I don’t remember where I learned that he was tried for apostasy. If it is just a legend so be it. I am not invested in this argument either way.
I apologise if I was not clear, I didn’t venture an opinion on whether Maimonides was or was not influenced by Islamic philosophy. However people are a product of their environment, so I have little doubt he was influenced by Islamic thinking to varying degrees.
In any event the issue was Maimonides a Muslim. The answer is of course no. I think the quote makes clear how he feels about Islam and how he saw himself as a Jew. The “us” in the quote being Jews.
I was also under the impression that the Rambam was put on trial in Egypt. I understood that Saladin intervened and saved the Rambam.
A google search indicates there is some controversy as to the veracity of these stories.
http://rabbimichaelsamuel.com/2010/02/did-maimonides-convert-to-islam-in-his-youth/
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/journals/JQR/13/3/Legend_of_the_Apostasy_of_Maimonides*.html
Maimonides certainly suffered under Islam, especially under the Almohads, who pursed (in Iberia, not Egypt) a policy of forced conversion. The Epistle to Yemen, which tf quotes, testifies to bitter personal experience. However, I see nothing in the historical sources about a forced conversion (his family fled Cordoba precisely to avoid this) or a trial. Can tf provide a source?
The fact that Maimonides suffered does not, however, contradict the fact that he was deeply influenced by Islamic philosophy.
Moshe Maimonides wrote from Egypt in 1172 where he was put on trial for apostasy because he ‘rejected’ Islam after a forced conversion:
This brief but eloquent paragraph not only sums up the the desperate situation Jews suffered under Arab and Muslim rule but also the Rambam’s feelings about Arabs and Islam.
“G-d has hurled us in the midst of this people, the Arabs, who have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us […] Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase and hate us as much as they. Therefore when David, of blessed memory, inspired by the holy spirit, envisaged the future tribulations of Israel, he bewailed and lamented their lot only in the Kingdom of Ishmael, and prayed in their behalf, for their deliverance, as is implied in the verse, “Woe is me, that I sojourn with Meschech, that I dwell beside the tents of Kedar.” (Psalms 120:5).
Sadly 900 years later nothing has changed.
While he was no Muslim, he was certainly well-ensconced in the Islamic philosophical tradition, which itself harked back to Greek sources. He can’t be understood properly without placing him in that context, see my post at http://southjerusalem.com/2008/12/reading-maimonides-through-islamic-glasses/
BTW, Micha Goodman’s new book (in Hebrew) on the Rambam’s “Guide for the Perplexed” is the best introduction I’ve read yet to his thinking. I hope Goodman is planning an English edition.