Those who talk

St. George of Greenwich

Martyrs wanted
By Jules Crittenden
Boston Herald City Editor
Saturday, September 2, 2006 - Updated: 08:24 AM EST

I was planning to maintain a tasteful silence about the forced conversion of Fox newsmen Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig. I expressed my gratitude at their release, and was going to let the humiliating subject lie.Others haven’t, however, so let’s go:

Centanni and Wiig -- abducted, bound and blindfolded by armed Islamic terrorists in Gaza -- were told they had to convert to Islam.They did so.They later said nice things about the Palestinian cause while still in the custody of Palestinian terrorist leaders. There was some premature debate among armchair heroes on the Internet about whether they should have done this.


Centanni and Wiig are alive and back with their loved ones, out of the hands of an enemy who could have slaughtered them like sacrificial sheep. I don’t hold anything they’ve done or said against them. I don’t really care how cynical or desperate their actions were. They’ve been somewhere I never have been and hope to God I never will be.It would be nice to see the media and the Muslim world condemn of this kind of obscenity by Islamic terrorists, but apparently that is not going to happen.

Now, a sanctimonious Canadian, columnist David Warren of the Ottawa Citizen, has accused Centanni and Wiig of aiding the enemy through "conventional cowardice."This disgusting slur was amplified at www.realclearpolitics.com, a prominent and respected opinion website that saw fit to run these remarks under its own imprint.

Warren reportedly is a convert to Catholicism. Presumeably that conversion happened after his reported divorce, or he would be a sinner and a hypocrite rather than, as he presumeably is now, forgiven. He called Centanni and Wiig’s gunpoint conversion something we can "understand: not forgive." He assumes they are not Christians, but proceeds to argue for martyrdom, if not Christian martyrdom, then martydom for the West.

Warren’s condemnation of these men raises some very unusual questions. Clearly he’s eager for their deaths. But in his own case, does he long to be nailed to a cross of his own, or would he rather have some heretics to burn? Or is he just jacked up on self-righteousness and spouting off idly from the sidelines? Whichever it may be, he starts to sound a lot like some other religious fanatics I could name.