I don’t claim to know what the recently-released journalists went through during their captivity by radical Islamists. I am pleased to hear that Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig have been released, though I am concerned by a disturbing but novel element in the story: the hostages were forced to convert to Islam under the threat of death before their release.

“We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint,â€? Mr. Centanni later told Fox. “Don’t get me wrong here. 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.â€?

Their conversions have numerous important consequences. It’s a case of “heads, westerners lose; tails, jihadists win.”

While the Western mind would not recognise such conversion under duress, the jihadist does not share the Western legal frame of mind. As soon as the former hostages denounce and renounce their forced conversions, they will become apostates and in so doing they will be signing their own death warrants: death is the penalty for apostasy in Islam. If these journalists fall in the hands of jihadists once more, a certain death will await them under Islamic law.

Their conversions become a propaganda “victory” for the kidnappers in two ways. At the immediate level, they win when they get to brag about converting two western infidels. It helps to fuel the jihadist perception that westerners are weak and empty vessels, reinforcing their notion that westerners either believe in nothing or are not earnestly committed to their own beliefs. In turn, it will encourage more gun-point conversions of kidnapped westerners in the near future.

Long-term, time will expose the other side of the same contempt for westerners: westerners lie and will say anything to advance their unprincipled interests or to save their worthless lives. Killing one or however many of the present or future forced converts who become hypostates will gave the jihadists a second kick at the propaganda can. It will also provide greater justification for jihadists everywhere to come after more westerners and show that that arm of Islamic justice is long.

The jihadists will be renewed in their faith to show the West as they believe (and our culture unfortunately does not): that there are worse things than being dead.

Crossposted from Civitatensis.caÂ?