Campus Newspapers Allowing Muslim Students to Censor News Articles

What happens when you bend over too far backwards to avoid offending someone? You start losing freedoms, such as freedom of the press. The campus newspaper at Oregon State University (are they Beavers or Ducks? - I can never remember) published an article called "The Islamic Double Standard" which got the muslim students turbans in a twist, and to atone for their sin, the paper now allows the Muslim students to censor articles for any signs of blasphemy (h/t Little Green Footballs):

Among the students offended by the column was Nada Mohamed, a 20-year-old junior and the vice president of OSU’s Muslim Student Association.

“It was amazing to me that they (the campus newspaper) were allowed to publish this kind of stuff,” she told the Corvallis Gazette-Times. “Tears were flowing out of my eyes as I was reading,” she said. “I felt like somebody was ripping my heart out.”

At the Daily Barometer, editors said e-mail and phone calls poured in. Senior editors have met with the Muslim Student Association.

“The pain that it caused ... did not subside with time,” said DD Bixby, the Barometer’s editor-in-chief. “It kind of just festered.”

She said editors have been checking copy with Muslim students, and on Tuesday deleted one paragraph from a piece scheduled to be published the next day.

This almost sounds like it came right out of the pages of Prayers for the Assassin, a book by Robert Ferrigno that I just finished reading yesterday while hanging around at the hospital (good book, by the way - it'll give you a scary picture of what an Islamic Republic of America might one day look like).

Do you think that if a Christian organization took offense at something the newspaper wrote, that they would be afforded the same privilege to censor articles?

Not unless they threaten to cut off the editor's head.