In the spring of 1976, London was the site of the World of Islam Festival, a multifaceted event designed by a host of former diplomats, scholars, and those avidly interested in Islam in order to inspire Muslim-Christian unity. Through a panoply of art and visual culture exhibitions, as well as other events, organizers attempted to present a comprehensive view of Islamic civilization, as they termed it, from the framework they called an Islamic point of view. Using history to educate the public was thought of as a means to solve contemporary tensions between religious and ethnic groups in Britain at the time. Archival documents, which have yet to be cited in the extant literature, illuminate this little-known planning process. Through a contrapuntal reading of archival material held in repositories across London, this paper returns to the World of Islam Festival to reexamine the thing it lacked: contemporary art from West Asia and North Africa. I ask three main questions. First, how did the festival use historical Islamic art objects as metonyms for the Islamic world? Secondly, what were the reasons for marginalizing contemporary art and artists from the so-called Middle East, despite the presence of contemporary artists such as Libyan Ali Omar Ermes, and Sudanese Osman Waqialla in the festival’s planning efforts? And third, against these historical displays, how did contemporary Arab, Iranian, and Turkish art gain prominence in London, particularly through artist-led movements and alternative spaces of display? Through a reconsideration of the World of Islam Festival, I not only illuminate the forgotten shows of contemporary Middle Eastern art at the festival, but also posit that these small shows acted as a locus for identity articulation against the festival’s historicist overtones, as well as reflected the diasporic identities of an amorphous London. In turn, I argue that the World of Islam Festival should be understood a critical interlocutor for the broader proliferation of contemporary Middle Eastern art in London beginning in the mid 1970s. Articulating the broader impact and significance of the World of Islam Festival prompts new historiographical questions about the Western reception of contemporary Middle Eastern art in the 20th and 21st centuries.