Jeff Jacoby at Town Hall (from a column that also appeared in yesterday's Boston Globe):

If you were one of the journalists kidnapped in Gaza last month and ordered at gunpoint to become a Muslim, what would you have done? Fox News reporter Steve Centanni and photographer Olaf Wiig announced their acceptance of Islam on a videotape released by their kidnappers -- "because they had the guns," Centanni later said, "and we didn't know what the hell was going on."

Whether their acquiescence was an act of cowardice or of prudence, reasonable people can debate. Clearly it wasn't their only choice. If I were ever told, with a gun to my head, to recite the shahada or die, I hope I would have the courage to take the bullet.

I'll save Jacoby the trouble of trying to speculate -- he wouldn't have the guts. I know he wouldn't because he doesn't have the guts to say flat out that he thinks Centanni and Wiig were cowards -- that for instance, Wiig should have left his wife a young widow by "courageously" refusing to recite an utterly insincere oath. Jacoby won't say this, though -- he merely implies it because he's too much of a coward to say such an unpopular thing. People might send him mean e-mails in response.