So this is driving me crazy.
In some sf novel (couldn’t be Heinlien, could it?), part of the future history includes Jews and Muslims realizing at last the basis of their centuries-old conflict is just different interpretations of some bit of arcane doctrine.
So they make peace and disappear into the desert together. Other future mayhem rages on without them.
You’ve read it, right? I’m not crazy. (Right!?)
What novel?
Heinlein would not have been so ignorant. The conflict we see today between Jews and Muslims we see today does not go back hundreds of years and is not theologically based. It goes aback about 60 years, to the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948, and is about the fact that both Israelis, most of whom moved into the area about that time, or have moved in since, and the Palestinian Arabs who formerly lived in the area, and many of whom were forced out of their homes (and just happen to be Muslims), believe the land to be rightfully theirs. Before that, Jews and Muslims had a history of getting on rather well, certainly better than either group got along with Christians.
Furthermore, given the many millions of Jews and Muslims that live all around the world (Muslims alone make up about 23% of the world’s population), the notion that either group, let alone both, could “disappear into the desert” is ludicrous.
And most Moslems don’t live anywhere near a desert. Almost half of all Moslems live in Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sudan, Nigeria, and Ethiopia. I can’t imagine any ordinary science fiction publisher putting out such a book. If you’re correct in your description of the plot, it’s some oddball marginal publisher.
Just possibly ‘Strength of Stones’ by Greg Bear?
C’mon, now. Practically all science fiction is ludicrous. . . and this is the story you wish to nitpick?
O.K., the title is Strength of Stones, not Strength of Bones, and it is by Greg Bear. The OP hasn’t explained the plot at all well. It’s about a future in which the infrastructure of each city is so computerized and mechanized that each of the cities achieves sentience. They then throw out the inhabitants. Among those inhabitants are Christians, Jews, and Moslems, and they apparently all join together to live in the wilderness. That’s all I’ve been able to determine from the reviews of the book online.
Correction - 93 years, six months, as of today.
1920?
March 1, 1920.
I wrote:
> O.K., the title is Strength of Stones, not Strength of Bones, and it is
> by Greg Bear.
And we discover that sometimes I misread other people’s posts. I remember reading Nancarrow’s post and then trying to find a book called Strength of Bones mentioned anywhere online. Eventually I found that the title was Strength of Stones and said so in my post. Now I look back at Nancarrow’s post and see that they did call it Strength of Stones, and the problem was my inability to read carefully.
YEEEEESSSSSSS!!!
Ahem. Excuse me. But
I WAS RIGHT ON THE INTERNET. 
:does happy dance:
And it’s about time I reread SoS. All I really remember was how it was a bunch of religious factions transplanted to another planet, and they’d built sentient moving cities, and then the cities had expelled them for some reason… and YOU were there, and YOU were there, and Auntie Em was there…