Jews and Muslims in the Arab World highlights the effects of historical memory on the Arab-Israel conflict, demonstrating that both Jews and Arabs use stories of distant pasts to create their identities and shape their politics. Whether real or imagined, the past filtered through their collective memories has had and will continue to have enormous influence on how Jews and Arabs perceive themselves and each other. Jews and Muslims in the Arab World describes the ways in which the past is absorbed, internalized, and then processed among Jews and Arabs. The book stresses the importance of historical imagination on the current evolving political cultures, but does not claim that explanations from an ancient past shed light on every aspect of contemporary events.

"This is a remarkable work of scholarship and a valuable contribution to our understanding of the conflict." - Jewish Book World

"Scholars Jacob Lassner and S. Ilan Troen step forward with a masterly, majestic, original and thought-provoking volume....the authors deserve praise....Never before has the chasm which separates the Muslim world from its rivals been described more eloquently than it is in this book. It can only be hoped that this splendid volume, written by authors with an extraordinary knowledge of Islam and the Arab world, will do much to expose the naivete of those who constantly beat their breat in contrition before those who seek the destruction of the Jewish state." - Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs

"An excellent and unorthodox volume on Israel and the Arabs. This is not just another book on the Arab-Israeli conflict. The authors, whose objective is to reinterpret developments in the Arab-Israeli conflict, go about their corrective task with impressive erudition and forthrightness. The authors have written two books grafted into one, providing a unique culturally informed overview of the Arab-Israeli conflict. They have produced an essential and long overdue complement to existing scholarship on the subject. This is truly an important book." - Journal of Israeli History: Politics, Society, Culture