Last year, Mark Steyn wrote that Europe isn't multicultural, it's bicultural. And while you can witness the clash of its two cultures more or less nightly on the continent, you can see its future in Britain. On the one hand, there's a Europe that, beginning with Nietzsche's famous 1882 aphorism that "God is Dead", has spent the better part of the 20th century eliminating religion from the public square.

In the past, European efforts to eliminate some religions have been rather more aggressive, of course. But these days, it's merely a mopping up operation: last year, the EU issued an edict declaring that the words "Christ" and "Jew" be spelled in all lower-case letters. And of course, European (and American) universities are busy eliminating the millennia-old meanings of the initials B.C. and A.D.

But meanwhile, another culture, Europe's largest group of immigrants, relatively recent arrivals to the continent, takes its religion much more seriously than the postmodern old fogeys in Cambridge and Brussels. And to prove it, they're building the continent's the largest place of worship able to hold up to 70,000 worshippers; to be opened in time for London's 2012 Olympics:

It will be called the London Markaz and it is intended to be a significant Islamic landmark whose prominence and stature will be enhanced by its proximity to the Olympic site. When television viewers around the world see aerial views of the stadium during the opening ceremony in six years’ time, the most prominent religious building in the camera shot will not be one of the city’s iconic churches that have shaped the nation’s history, such as St Paul’s Cathedral or Westminster Abbey, but the mega-mosque. ...

The first mosque was opened in Britain more than 80 years ago and there are now well over 1,000 – many converted from Anglican churches. London now has more mosques than any other western city. The biggest in western Europe is just a couple of miles from where I live in south London, on a five-acre site. It can hold up to 5,000 worshippers and, while hardly a Timurid masterpiece, its dome and minarets do not detract from what is a rather gloomy bit of suburban Surrey. Funded entirely by voluntary donations from its congregation, it was erected by the Ahmadi Muslims, who also contructed the first London mosque in Putney in 1924. The Ahmadis, who have lived harmoniously in this country for many years, condemn any form of extremism. Tellingly, perhaps, the Ahmadis are considered heretics by the rest of the Islamic world.

Now consider the east London mosque. Its backers are the Tablighi Jamaat, a missionary organisation that says it is non-political and peaceful. Yet a senior FBI anti-terrorism official has called it a recruiting ground for al-Qa’eda, and the French secret services described it as “an antechamber for fundamentalism”. Its current European headquarters are in Dewsbury, home town of Mohammed Siddique Khan, leader of the July 7 suicide bombers, who attended the local mosque. Much of the funding for the Markaz, which will cost about £100 million, is expected to come from Saudi Arabia. ...

It is suggested that the Markaz complex will become the “Muslim quarter” for the Olympics, acting as a hub for Islamic competitors and spectators, something that is surely contrary to the spirit of the Games, which are meant to bring people together, not keep them apart. Futhermore, in an irony not lost on Mr Craig, just a mile or so from where the mosque is due to go up, the Kingsway International Christian Centre, the biggest evangelical church in Europe with 12,000 worshippers on a Sunday, is coming down to make way for the Olympic stadium.