My first, momentary reaction on seeing the face of a veiled Muslim woman replaced by a rubber glove is to look away, embarrassed, maybe even fearful. After all, it only took a few bad Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet to start riots round the world.

Imagery and Islam can be a combustible mix. But - deep breath - this is art, one of a series of pictures by Shadi Ghadirian called Like EveryDay. Others have the faces concealed by a cleaver, a pan, an iron, a grater. Ghadirian is Iranian; she lives and works in Tehran. Evidently my reflex assumption that President Ahmedinejad's goons would routinely destroy such works as somehow blasphemous is wrong.

Equally, Shirin Fakhim's grotesque sculptures of Tehran prostitutes in stockings, their legs splayed - made from pieces of kitchenware - are okay too. After all, there are said to be 100,000 prostitutes in Tehran. And why wouldn't there be? No moral police force in human history has ever been successful for long. Yet, somehow, one thought... And, anyway, didn't Islamic art just kind of stop several centuries ago?

That's exactly the point Ghadirian and Fakhim are making. Autopilot attitudinising by westerners like me about Islam and the Middle East is stupid. It is a product of fear and malign machinations by people in both the Middle East and the West who wish to plunge us into a war of civilisations, or who want us to think that the Islamic world

is a uniform landscape of veiled women and alarming young men. But the truth is that Muslims wear rubber gloves and visit prostitutes, just like us. Their world is, like our world, many different things. And now, like us, they are making art to celebrate, lampoon or mourn this truth.

Then there's the dinner-party misconception that a blanket ban exists on representation, so that Islamic art can only be abstract. This isn't true, except in some fundamentalist and very anti-historical interpretations. And new Middle Eastern artists may be testing the limits of tolerance, but the fact that they represent the real world isn't the issue. 'The non-representation point is overplayed,' says Gilane Tawadros, a consultant to Contemporary Art in the Middle East, a symposium at Tate Modern. 'Obviously, there's been a restriction in some religious places, and it's true that in centres like the Museum of Egyptian Modern Art in Cairo there's an emphasis on abstraction and landscape. But that hasn't ruled out portraiture, and among the younger generation I don't see it being an issue.'

The Middle East is the new big thing in the contemporary art souks of the world, a vast new source of goodies for the market's limitless voracity. All the big auction houses - Sotheby's, Christie's and Bonhams - have specialist departments and big sales devoted to the region, and prices are rising. In Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt - in fact, in the whole region; even, falteringly, Iraq - young artists are toiling to satisfy hot money's seemingly limitless appetite

for new art. China is so last week, literally so in the case of Charles Saatchi’s gallery in Chelsea. Ghadirian and Fakhim are two of the artists in the new exhibition, Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East, which replaces The Revolution Continues: New Chinese Art. The collectors' caravan has followed the Silk Road west to the Mediterranean. Whether Saatchi leads or follows is a moot point; what is not in doubt is his presence at the hot end of any new art market.

With Gaza in flames just before the exhibition opens, he might this time find himself at the very hot end. Fundamentalists and hotheads may not welcome what some will undoubtedly see as decadent Arab art being embraced by western money. Is he concerned about security? Saatchi does what he does best: he doesn't comment.

In fact, he doesn't even say he doesn't comment: you have to prise that out of his spokesperson.

The question is: does the show amount to more than just another art-well coming on stream? For the moment, it is hard to say. If the caravan of global collectors moved on tomorrow, then the Middle Eastern market could be left high and dry. On the other hand, there do seem to be more substantial forces at work. The first point to make is that the Middle East is not the art backwater we sometimes assume. Modern-art museums and art schools have long been important in the region, and the institutional impetus is accelerating, creating museums and festivals that are becoming world players.

Qatar has just opened its new Museum of Islamic Art (MIA), designed by IM Pei. It was Pei who designed the glass pyramid at the Louvre, which, controversially, is to open a version of itself in Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi is paying $1.3 billion to borrow the Louvre's name and hundreds of its art works. (Jacques Chirac said the scheme was a bridge, an attempt to prevent a war of civilisations. Others are appalled at what they see as a crude renting out of French heritage.) There are also biennials now established across the region: Tel Aviv had its first last year. Even in war-torn Kabul, the Centre for Contemporary Art Afghanistan has become a significant cultural force.

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