OK, so here's another Tuesday column that will probably go down like a lead balloon.

I feel I have to say something more about the Middle East. Friends here in London read this column on the Echo's website and they're always asking me not to write about foreign affairs. "People aren't interested. There's plenty of stuff going on without nagging them about foreign parts. Why don't you write something about Big Brother or about the fact that schoolkids can't read as well today as they could in Queen Victoria's time? Or about Sven? Anything but foreign politics. And stop scaring people with talk of war."

Well, the largest event looming over all our futures is the coming war with Iran. That country is governed by a religious fanatic who says Israel should be wiped off the map. He loathes western civilisation and has made warlike threats against Europe too. This man is busy developing nuclear weapons. Now on Israel's western flank there is an additional threat. Hamas rule the Palestinian Arabs. And Hamas, like Iran, say that Israel has no right to exist. The war gets closer even as Jack Straw repeats his insane palliative that it's "inconceivable".

Is there anything that can be done to avert conflict? Instead of blaming particular nations for all the trouble in the Middle East and the terrorist threat worldwide, why don't we start by asking what brought us to this? What went wrong?

As it happens, What Went Wrong is the title of a short but highly informative book on the subject by Bernard Lewis. He describes historical periods when relationships between Islam and the West were a lot better than they are now. So what did go wrong?

Part of the answer is that the formidable civilisation of medieval Islam has collapsed and been replaced by an agglomeration of Muslim states in which there is no political freedom. Almost every Islamic state you can think of is a corrupt dictatorship in which dissenters from the official line live in fear of imprisonment, torture and death. If women in Britain were treated as women in Muslim states are treated, there would be millions-strong protest marches through Trafalgar Square. While tolerant, multicultural Britain allows the building of great mosques in our towns and cities, I'd be thrown into prison in Saudi Arabia for wearing a crucifix. Churches are banned.

And it's not a case of tragic poverty: many of the Islamic states are rich in oil. It is a case of savage repression, greed, decadence and corruption. Bernard Lewis is a renowned historian of the Arab world. He concludes:

"If the peoples of the Middle East continue on their present path, the suicide bomber may become a metaphor for the whole region and there will be no escape from the downward path of hate and spite, rage, self-pity, poverty and oppression. But if they can abandon grievance and victimhood, settle their differences and join their talents, energies and resources in a common creative endeavour, then they can once again make the Middle East what it was in the Middle Ages - "a major centre of civilisation. The choice is their own".

Meanwhile, don't take your eyes off Iran.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.