The TAMAM project facilitates collaboration between the Museum for Islamic Art and various mosques to develop cultural educational material for use in mosques across Germany. The point of departure are the objects in the museum’s collection. In the Museum für Islamische Kunst, the arts and cultures of the countries influenced by Islam and those of western and central Europe are inseparably interwoven. Strong ties have been established through long and close contact. And even the region of the Near and Middle East is historically marked by great religious, cultural and ethnic diversity, and by the capacity to deal with this diversity. These links are immediately recognisable in the objects in the collection, a useful starting point if one wishes to bring the trans-regional cultural-historical and migration-historical processes of the past, reflected in the constructive spirit of art history, to bear on the social processes of the present day. Can looking at the past help to shape the future? Do the pictures that we create of ourselves and others actually accord with (art) history, or do images of identity need to be reconsidered?