Tuesday’s issue of Wayne State University’s student newspaper caused some to take a second look at a headline. The South End published an editorial column written by student staff member Joe Fisher entitled “Islam Sucks.”

“Some religions suck more than others, though, and one of them is Islam,” Fisher said. “The Muslim world is the poorest, most illiterate, backward, unhealthy, unenlightened, deprived and weakest of all the races.”

Staff members at the daily newspaper said the column has sparked the most complaints from readers in the paper’s history.

“People were upset and emotions were running very high on campus,” said Jeff Pope, assistant news editor at the paper. “But now people have had a few days to digest things and seem to be ready to discuss things.

“We basically feel that things should have been done differently, but it’s too late to change anything. We will most likely sit down and develop new guidelines. Every column has the potential to offend people.”

Fisher wrote an apologetic column that appeared on the paper’s Web site Thursday evening.

“My column titled ‘Islam sucks’ was unnecessarily harsh and insensitive to the feelings of many individuals,” the column said. “Truth is, I‘m just a 19-year-old white boy from the suburbs who doesn‘t know anything, except that people who want to kill me put my picture up on the Internet and put me on the local news stations need to get a grip. If anyone were to act on such feelings, it would prove the person writing that column right. If you don‘t want to prove that person right, do the most powerful thing: Ignore and know ignorance for what it is. If we ever want to move on as a human race, we need to ignore the people who say things like I said, not parade them.”

Pope said columns run Tuesdays and Thursdays with a daily circulation of about 8,000.

“As a staff, we are all somewhat responsible for what goes in the paper,” Pope said. “Even if we don’t agree with the columns, we always stand by our writers.”

And Hussein Ibish, Midwest regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington, D.C., said he’s not surprised the column was allowed to run.

“What we’re seeing in this country is a second wave of what is essentially anti-Semitism,” he said. “This is an explosion of racism that is the intellectual equivalent of anti-Semitism.

“What bothers me is not so much that the stuff is out there, but we are allowing space for it to exist when we could, and in many cases, do, say no.”

Steve Lacy, director of MSU’s School of Journalism, said although he doesn’t agree with the opinion of the column, the writer’s words are protected as freedom of speech.

“The First Amendment exists and protects people who are stupid and who are not,” he said. “It doesn’t sound like this person has any real understanding of the religion. I would hope the outcome would be an extensive and detailed discussion on the topic, about the column and the First Amendment.”

Salman Ateequi, vice president of MSU’s Muslim Student’s Association, said the writer of the column made factual errors.

“It completely sounds like another one of those ignorant articles just trying to find something to hate against religions,” the finance sophomore said. “He hasn’t researched anything. Even though you may feel this way, you would research it.”

Jeremy Steele, editor in chief of The State News, said MSU’s student newspaper has had its own problems with columns. A column The State News published last April was against homosexual matrimony.

“Anytime a newspaper prints an opinion that goes counter to the beliefs of another group, the paper is going to hear from it, and rightfully so,” he said. “There is a difference in the tone. While the column in our newspaper takes a strong stance against homosexuality, it’s a fairly calmly argued opinion and fairly straightforward. The column on Islam, though, could be construed as hate speech.

“He has a right to have that opinion, but the newspaper has a responsibility to make sure it’s executed in an appropriate and fair way.”