They did NOT accept sharia.
And we are not going to be living under sharia, or accepting it, either.
But facing life with the idea firmly in mind in advance that it does not matter what you adhere to, what you say, what you do, so long as you survive with your destroyed, emasculated integrity dooms you to failure at the very beginning.
Oh for Gawd's sake! You believe that any jack-leg with a gun pointed at your head forces you to compromise your integrity?
This was a phony situation, a phony, coerced "conversion," and it was publicly renounced the minute Centani and Wieg got in front of a microphone.
Neither man has any reason to feel "emasculated" for not supplying blood for a bunch of renegade Islamists.
All coerced "confessions" are phony, but many people have resisted them and emerged with their integrity. Others have not resisted and have been killed anyway, and died knowing that they had given away the only thing left to them.
My point, which no one seems to be willing to answer, is where we draw the line. If we go into a battle already decided that we will surrender to the enemy as soon as the going gets tough, we are never going to win.