We are engaged in a war not of nations but of civilisations. We are fighting not over boundaries but over beliefs. Which is precisely why culture has such an important role to play — and not least in this country where, as a Times survey suggested last week, 65 per cent of the Muslim population believe that their community need to become more integrated with that of broader society.

That is why we should welcome the opening of a new gallery at the V&A this month. The Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art may be entirely funded by a £5.4 million donation made by a family from Saudi Arabia, one of the Middle East’s more repressively puritanical regimes, but as a spokesman made plain, curators are put under no obligation to portray Islamic culture in any prescribed way.

This stunning collection can speak for itself. It includes some of the finest treasures to come out of the Middle East, from the magnificent Ardabil carpet (the world’s earliest carpet with an inscribed date) through the liquid calligraphy of elaborate manuscripts to the intricate star maps of engraved astrolabes. A display such as this can work to broaden perspectives and open debate. It serves to re-emphasise the subtlety and sophistication of Muslim culture; that the Islamic world is about far more than fanatical extremism, and that ambitions can rise above bombing and jihad.

Culture has long played an important ambassadorial role. From medieval times, when a monarch would dispatch a painter to make him a picture of a potential bride, right through to the Cold War when exchanges of musicians or dancers helped to maintain contact between the Soviet Union and the United States, art has fulfilled an important diplomatic function. It has helped to breed respect.

The most famous artist to double up as a diplomat was Peter Paul Rubens. A scholar, classicist and collector as well as a superlative painter, he was as comfortable among kings as among studio assistants. No wonder his patrons, Archduke Ferdinand and Infanta Isabella, the Spanish viceroys of the Netherlands, entrusted him with delicate ambassadorial duties. In 1629 he was paving the way towards a peace accord between England and Spain, offering his allegorical painting Peace and War by way of persuasion. It hangs today in the National Gallery.

Now, at a time when, according to the same Times survey, a significant minority of British Muslims believe themselves to be at war with the rest of society, cultural diplomacy has an almost unprecedented potential. And clearly our museums recognise this. The Islamic treasures about to go on display have already been on tour around the US and to Japan. We have had recent shows on the Turks, on the ancient Persian Empire, on the mission of Gentile Bellini to the Ottoman court, and an exhibition of Islamic masterworks on loan from Moscow’s State Hermitage Museum will be one of the highlights in Edinburgh this summer. In a politically convulsed world, we recognise our need for a deeper understanding of the peoples of our multi-ethnic populations.

The new V&A display emphasises long historical connections. When Europe was still languishing in the dark ages, the Middle East was pre-eminent in pretty much everything. It invented the clock pendulum, the magnetic compass, the astrolabe. It was the home of al-Khawarizmi, the father of algebra (al-jabra: in Arabic, to restore broken parts) and of Alhazen and his early experiments with optics. This was the culture that made possible our own Renaissance.

It is not inimical to our own. Its abstracted art, argues Jason Eliot in a forceful new travel book, Mirrors of the Unseen, should not simply be seen as some product of strict Islamic decrees. It cannot be explained by mere prohibition against the figurative, a sort of artistic road block around which the most talented were forced to divert their efforts. Rather, he suggests, as we wander amid a profusion of geometric and vegetal forms, we should understand that we are wandering amid designs that evoke the perfection of some paradisiacal garden. The spirit of Islamic art, Eliot suggests, may be tracked back to a profound creative source: a source that is shared by so many great artists, Eastern and Western alike. What we are seeing is a profound longing for the divine translated to and expressed at some human level.

Art can speak of a shared spirit. When we lose sight of this we lose sight of the path ahead. For centuries we were pupils and dependants of Islamic culture. So what happened? The decline of their civilisation is often, ironically, attributed to its phenomenal success. Muslims, it seems, did not think they had much to learn from the infidel West. While, as early as the 16th century, Europeans were studying Arabic and exploring Muslim cultures, the Middle East maintained what looks almost like a wilful lack of curiosity. As it grew more isolated, the West slowly developed.

A broader cultural perspective points the way head. And the story of East-West relations can continue in a beautiful garden — not end at a claustrophobic impasse in a dark cinema.

The Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art opens at the V&A on July 20.

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