“Please George Bush, please Tony Blair,” pleads Fox News reporter Steve Centanni, “open your minds to Islam, and bring peace to all people around the world.” Of course, the statement was made under duress after being abducted.
The Guardian writes:
“Two journalists from the American Fox News channel were freed unharmed in Gaza yesterday after being forced at gunpoint to convert to Islam at the end of a two-week kidnapping ordeal.
Hours before their release, the two men appeared in a video, dressed in Arab robes. They announced their conversion and criticised American and British foreign policy in the Middle East.
Steve Centanni, 60, an American correspondent, and his freelance cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36, a New Zealander, were later released and dropped off by Palestinian security forces at a hotel in Gaza City. They were then driven to Israel.
…
“Then they forced us to convert to Islam at gunpoint,” said Centanni. “I have the highest respect for Islam and learned a lot of very good things about it, but it was something we felt we had to do because they had guns and we didn’t know what the hell was going on.””
But the arguments Centanni was forced to make on the video released by his captors were generally designed to sound moderate: “Islam is not fascism” is true, and worth noting, after George W. Bush resorts to the obnoxious (and perhaps fascist itself) term “Islamic-fascism” in a press conference. The most offensive comment in the forced speech was something Centanni said about Islam that Bush would probably say himself about his own religion:
“It is the true religion for all people for all times.”

[photo via AP-Yahoo]