IN MY SHOES: Would You Convert To Islam If A Gun Was Pointed At Your Head?
Jeff Jacoby contemplates what he would have done if, like Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig, he was ordered to convert to Islam at the behest of an Islamofascist thug:
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.
And I hope I would remember the example not of Centanni and Wiig, but of Fabrizio Quattrocchi, an Italian security guard taken hostage in Iraq in 2004. Quattrocchi’s jihadi captors, intending to make a video of an infidel’s craven death, ordered him to kneel beside an open grave with a hood on his head. Defiantly, he stood up, tried to rip off the hood, and shouted, ‘‘I will show you how an Italian dies!’’ They murdered him an instant later, but he died bravely, on his feet, refusing with his last breath to be humiliated by savages.
Fabrizio Quattrocchi is one of The Stiletto’s personal heroes. In this age of metrosexual men who have been socialized since boyhood to take humiliation from schoolyard bullies rather than to hit back and risk a bloody nose or worse, he epitomized manhood and courage. Like Jacoby, The Stiletto would recall his example were she to find herself in similar circumstances, and her final prayers to her G-d - not Allah - would be for the courage to do the same.
The Stiletto is not a churchgoer and has a more casual relationship with her religion than Jacoby, a practicing Orthodox Jew. Nonetheless, we may both feel stronger about forced conversion than other, perhaps more pragmatic, people because within living memory in the 20th century, The Stiletto’s people and his were targeted for extermination because of their respective religions (among other factors).
I don't suppose it would be helpful to say you wanted to learn more about the Quran while they held a gun to your head...
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