The disappearanc in the media of the main point of the Steve Centanni kidnapping story

I ran across this editorial from the Weekly Standard yesterday talking about the kidnapping of Steve Centanni. To me, the big story was their conversion from Christianity to Islam, which the media just stopped covering as soon as they were released. I wondered if it was a real conversion. I wanted some follow-up questions on it. The media didn't come through.

A few excerpts:

The significance of this forced conversion has been downplayed in the media. The New York Times and the Washington Post even pronounced the two "unharmed" on release. This judgment is perverse. If Muslim prisoners in American custody were forced to convert to Christianity on pain of death or as a condition of release, the press would denounce it as virtual torture, and rightly so: No sane person would say the prisoners had suffered no harm.

This blindness also trivializes religion. Many people would sooner die than deny the commitments that shape their lives. Such beliefs lie near the heart of Christian doctrines of martyrdom, especially in the Middle East. In the Donatist controversy, the church was fractured over the question of whether and how to readmit those who under threat had denied their faith. In recent years, Christians in Sudan, Iran, Nigeria, and Indonesia have accepted death at the hands of Islamist extremists rather than convert to Islam.

My first thoughts on this story are found here.

Watch out for the potholes.