It's not nonsense - the penalty for apostasy from islam is death. If they renounce these conversions, they'll have to spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders for a fanatic muslim who's carrying that sentence out. And he may not be real careful to avoid killing their families along with them. Or, they can live out their lives as faithful muslims, which certainly IS denying Christ. Pretty crappy choice either way. I hope other newsies will take a lesson from this.
First of all, in the US, and in many areas of the western world, Muslims do convert to Christianity and do not get murdered. Second, it is highly doubtful that anyone other than a handful of kooks--even in the Muslim world--actually take these reporters' "conversions" seriously. The likelihood of them or their families ever facing any real threat is virtually zero.
Just to follow up with an example. Many people, including myself, have posted the Muhammaed cartoons on their web sites. Technically speaking, we are under threat of death. Do I lose sleep? Not a wink. These reporters, faced with a 100% chance of having their heads cut off vs. perhaps a one-billionth of a chance of being killed later on, did the math and made the obviously correct decision.
Apparently a huge percentage of people who think it's noble to die for their country think it's stupid to die for God and arrogant to want to do more than grovel and beg and submit.
The implications are fairly huge, and I'm having a hard time accepting them.