Jewish, Christian and Muslim musicians meet in Barcelona in the spring of 2008. Under the guidance of the viol player and conductor Jordi Savall they perform the concert Jerusalem: The City of the Two Peaces – a musical journey through the history of this extraordinary city, coloured by holy union and bitter conflict between the Abrahamic religions. In Savall's musical vision, the shared cultural and religious heritage uniting these three religions is formed into a creative dialogue forum wide enough to contain the tangible differences in style, tradition and interpretation characterizing this diverse group of musicians. According to him, music is an apt metaphor for dialogue: we are all different, he claims, but through music we can communicate and build community without violating this integrity.

In the autumn of 2007, the author Susanne Levin writes in the Muslim cultural journal Minaret about her experiences of estrangement and interreligious encounters. As a young girl, the daughter of an Auschwitz survivor, in 1950s post-war Sweden she never seemed to fit into the patterns of Swedish normality. This, she writes, created a “stranger's soul” in her: a deeply rooted feeling of being vulnerable and an outsider. To Levin, writing has therefore become a way of reconciling herself with her Jewish identity and a weapon against the growing racism and anti-Semitism she observes around her.