The complete inability of the Western world to mention the source of Arab behavior in Darfur -- the Arab supremacism that is at the heart of Islam, whereby the "best of people," those to whom the Qur'an was given, and "in their language," to Muhammad, himself an Arab, as were his Companions, and to understand the role of Islam in the behavior of the Sudanese government both in southern Sudan (where 1.8 million Christians and animists died as a result of deliberate policies of starvation, as well as mass-murder, by the Arabs of the north), and in Darfur (where 400,000 black African -- i.e., non-Arab--Muslims, died as a result of mass murder) is quite something.

These "divest for Darfur" or "Rallies for Darfur" or "Let's Save Darfur" events, movements, campaigns, never ever mention what animates the murderers. Islam is never mentioned. But it is the texts of Islam that justified the killings of non-Muslims in the southern Sudan. And it is the attitudes of Islam -- that is the "attitude" by which Arabs are superior to non-Arabs, an "attitude" that explains the complete indifference to, or even secret support by the Arab League and all the Arabs (save for Kanan Makiya), to the Anfal campaign in which 182,000 Kurds were killed, and which explains the complete indifference as well to the cultural and linguistic imperialism of the Arabs in Algeria (and Morocco), against the Berbers, and their use of the Berber language, and attempt to preserve Berber customs and ways. Islamization is ordinarily accompanied by such cultural and linguistic imperialism -- an example of which can be found in the Arabic names, and the deep desire to be taken as having an Arabic lineage, by so many in Pakistan, where every third person appears to be a sayyid, or "descendant of the tribe of Muhammad."

Nicholas Kristof, who specializes in heart-on-his-sleeve reports, and who has gotten a lot of mileage, and a Pulitzer as well, out of his supposedly "superb" coverage -- it has been resolutely mediocre, substituting dimestore sentimentalism and cheap anguish for what would be helpful, that is an intelligent apprehension of events, no making sense of them (it's all a mystery to the likes of Nicholas Kristof, simply inexplicable, just one more damn case, apparently, of man's inhumanity to man) and, at best, mere reporting with no sense made of men and events -- of the mass murder in Darfur, has not ever understood the role of Islam as a vehicle of Arab supremacism and, indeed, hasn't the faintest idea what Islam is all about.

It's hard to beat Tom Friedman for sheer self-assured vacuity, but with Nicholas Kristof in the race, especially in his reporting on the Sudan of which he is so proud, and for which he has been so lavishly rewarded, one would have to say that they are running neck and neck.