I'd be curious to know what were their religious convictions were before the forced conversion.
I doubt that they were gung-ho Christians. But by "converting" they also renounced modern all modern Western secular belief - in things such as individual liberty, equality, and free will - by submitting themselves to Islam and thus to sharia, Islamic law. Islam is both a political system and a religious cult, and they accepted it.
I think this is a terrible precedent, and I think we're going to see more and more kidnappings and attacks where the Muslims demand that their victims convert. After all, it was pretty easy in this case; while the reporters were roughly treated and no doubt uncomfortable and afraid, it doesn't even sound as if they were tortured or seriously beaten or abused. Just the threat of it was enough to get them to publicly renounce their principles, thus proving to the Muslim mind that we in the West have nothing that is really important to us and for which we will fight.
What difference does that make?
Anything done at the point of a gun is coercion and should be ignored.
Belief in a void, perhaps.
Agreed. I kind of made the same point to you in my freepmail last night. I don't know if they are Christians, or if they truly believe in God.
However, since they were forced to make a public video where they proclaimed their conversion to Islam, it would've been fitting upon their release, to renounce their conversion in front of the cameras. “Don't get me wrong here [Centanni said] I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it, but it was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns, and we didn't know what the hell was going on.”
If he has the highest respect for Islam... is his respect for Christianity lower?
That was the moment when he and Wiig should've renounced Islam and proclaimed Christianity as the true religion. But Alas, instead, they both praised the Palestinians as being beautiful and kind-hearted people. Yeah, right... 63% of such wonderful people have elected a terrorist government - the kind of government that had these 2 converted at gunpoint. Centanni and Wiig were more concerned with the Palestinians' cause than they were concerned about renouncing their conversion to Islam.
I've been looking for the video in which they renounced Islam, but couldn't find it. So, I'm posting the only 2 videos I found.