The Financial Times takes Bernard Lewis, the 86-year-old Arabist, out to lunch. Lewis is a wonderfully lucid and erudite writer, and he even speaks in full sentences, which the FT is wise enough to reproduce. The whole interview is worth reading. Lewis, when pressed, says sexual inequality is at the core of the Arab world's failure. And there's a funny episode when Tom Friedman of the New York Times sits down, unexpectedly, at the table. Here's a sample Lewis, on Saudi Arabia.

Imagine if the Ku Klux Klan or Aryan Nation obtained total control of Texas and had at its disposal all the oil revenues, and used this money to establish a network of well-endowed schools and colleges all over Christendom peddling their particular brand of Christianity. This is what the Saudis have done with Wahhabism. The oil money has enabled them to spread this fanatical, destructive form of Islam all over the Muslim world and among Muslims in the west. Without oil and the creation of the Saudi kingdom, Wahhabism would have remained a lunatic fringe in a marginal country.