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This is very interesting and worth repeating:

Indeed, few in the West know what’s going on regarding the example of Muhammad and the stance of traditional Islam on conversion. The human rights should have the courage to recognize and denounce this conversion-or-else directive, and to recognize the plight of those who even today suffer from its scourge.

Absolutely. And that's exactly the point I've been trying to make in the last few days. The conversion is INVALID to us westerners, but it is definitely VALID to Muslims.

The rationale upon which the video of their conversion was made, was based on the premise that the Koran not only recognizes forced conversion, but promotes them.

Take this article for example and its subsequent quotes:

Muhammad instructed his followers to call people to Islam before waging war against them—the warfare would follow from their refusal to accept Islam or to enter the Islamic social order as inferiors, required to pay a special tax (Sahih Muslim 4294). There is therefore a threat in this “invitation” to accept Islam. Would one who converted to Islam under the threat of war be considered to have converted under duress? No; from the standpoint of traditional schools of Islamic jurisprudence, such a conversion would have resulted from “no compulsion.”
Muhammad reinforced these instructions many times during his prophetic career. Late in his career, he wrote to Heraclius, the Eastern Roman Emperor in Constantinople: “Embrace Islam and you will be safe” (Bukhari, 4.52.191). Heraclius did not accept Islam, and soon the Byzantines would know well that the warriors of jihad indeed granted no safety to those who rejected their “invitation.”

If by making a video under duress, and if it is viewed by Muslims in general as a valid conversion, then Centanni and Wiig have a moral obligation to publicly denounce it - not to us westerners – but to the Muslims.

Someone told me yesterday - something I've been listening all too frequent lately... Oh, but you would've done the same thing in their place... What were they supposed to do? It's easy for you to say that, etc. etc. Well, I said, I'm not questioning their “conversion,” I don't even know if they are Christians... that's not my point. I'm questioning their nonchalant attitude after they were released.

They are professional journalists working in Gaza. They know the culture, they report on their cause and struggle, so they also should have a good understanding of what constitutes Islam. And for journalists working vehemently to get the Palestinians' side of the story, it stretches the boundaries of the imagination to believe that upon their release they didn't know what was going on.

And if they are afraid to publicly renounce Islam for fear of getting killed next time the terrorists catch them, then, they have already been converted to Islam even if it's through fear. As a matter of fact, fear and punishment are an intrinsic component to the Koran.

However, that's not the point either. The point is to publicly renounce their “conversion” as an expression of defiance, and not submit in fear and announce their highest respect for Islam.

Remember, Hilal, the spokesman for the Palestinian government, told Reuters: “Good efforts to free the two journalists are continuing. Things are still going in a positive manner and information confirms the two journalists are in good health and are unharmed.”

But Centanni's recount of events paint a different picture. Here again, words like “conversion” and “unharmed” have different meaning in the West and the Arab world:

“In a phone call with Fox News, Centanni said they were abducted Aug. 14 by four masked gunmen on a side street in Gaza City. He said the assailants covered his head with a black hood, and crammed him and Wiig into a small car.
“Their possessions were taken, and their wrists were bound behind their backs. "I still have some sore wrists," he said. "It was digging into my wrists really badly."
“In captivity, Centanni said, he was laid face down in a dark garage and tied up in painful positions.
"If we tried to get up and sit up, which I did do a few times, they would eventually just force us back down with something stuck to my head," he said. "I don't know if it was a stick, a flashlight or a gun or what. We couldn't see. We were forced to lay face down again in the dirt with blindfolds on."

Granted, they weren't killed, but by all indications these journalists were harmed and terrorized, and I'm certainly in no position to judge them under those circumstances. I think that their comments upon being freed is fair game, and that they should be forthright about their forced conversion and renounce it (that is, if they do renounce it) not for our benefit, but for the terrorists' detriment.