MOSQUES ON THE RHINE

You disappear into the African bush for over two weeks, only to emerge back into the world to discover everything's the same. 

Bush is still commiserating over the dead horse of the immigration, people with 2-digit IQs are still paying attention to Paris Hilton, Palestinians are still killing each other in Gaza, Moslems are rioting around the world over some perceived insult to their religion of intolerance (in this case, the knighting of Salmon Rushdie by Queen Elizabeth), and good news from Iraq is not being reported.

What really got my attention, though, was a news bulletin from Cologne, Germany.

On our way to Nairobi, my son Jackson and I had a long layover in Frankfurt.  So I took him on a train ride to Cologne, which goes along the famous section of the Rhine from Mainz to Koblenz – the Valley of the Lorelei – with the great medieval castles perched on heights above the river.

The Castles on the Rhine is one of Europe's great sights.  But even more than them, I wanted Jackson to see one of Christianity's greatest architectural accomplishments, the Cologne Cathedral.

One of the world's largest churches, the largest Gothic structure in Europe, a World Heritage site, this magnificent edifice of Western Civilization took 632 years to complete.

Started in 1248, work continued on it until 1560, when Catholic-hating Protestants halted construction.  It wasn't until the 1840s that construction resumed, finished in 1880 as a symbol of the new-found pride of the German people and their contribution to Christendom.

It is such a thrilling experience to be in the presence of an awe-inspiring man-made wonder as the Cologne Cathedral.  The giant twin spires soar over 500 feet high:

The nave soars with spirituality in stone:

At the center of the church lies the Shrine of the Three Kings, a golden sarcophagus traditionally containing the remains of Gaspar, Melchoir and Balthazar, the Three Magi or Wise Men who visited Jesus in the manger, brought to Cologne by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in 1164.  The great church was built to house the remains and serve as a pilgrimage site.

It is at such a sacred place that Christians can feel most deeply in touch with the ancient and deep roots of their religion's history.

So it should come as no surprise whatever that today, Moslems want to spoil and horn in on it, by demanding they be allowed to build an enormous mosque right next to the Cathedral.

Construction of a 2,000-capacity mosque with twin minarets 170 feet high virtually within the very shadow of the Cathedral is scheduled to start this September.  "Moslems have been in Cologne for 40 years," argues Turkish Moslem Seyda Can [wow, four decades vs. 129 for Christians starting with St. Boniface in the early 700s].  "There are now 120,000 Moslems, 12% of the city's population.  We deserve this."

Thankfully, a broad coalition of Cologne residents has come together to oppose the mosque, from local leaders of the CDU party of Chancellor Angela Merkel to prominent Jewish intellectuals.

One of the latter, Ralph Giordano, has received death threats from Moslems for opposing the mosque.  "What kind of a state are we in that I can face a fatwa in Germany?" he asks.

What kind of a state indeed.  Let's see if Cologne is the place where the encroaching Moslemification of Germany is halted or allowed to proceed apace.  There are already more Moslems in Germany than in the US (3.2 vs. 2.7 million, 4% of Germany's 80 million).

As Joerg Uckerman, Cologne's deputy mayor, puts it: "I know about Londonistan and I don't want that here."

Or the Cologne Cathedral's Prelate Johannes Bastgen:  "We live in a land of religious freedom.  I would be very glad if the same principle existed in Moslem countries."

Let's wish upon the Germans who live near one of Christendom's greatest shrines courage and good fortune.  Or else Germany is going to end up not with castles and cathedrals, but mosques on the Rhine.

Ps.  Oh, that good news from Iraq?

First, the bad guys in Diyala province (and particularly in the capital of Baqouba) are being rolled up in a ball.  This is right on the heels of the same thing happening in Anbar.  The Sunnis are finally coming over to our side in droves and turning in the terrorists. 

The same thing is happening in the Baghdad suburbs.

Second, new technology is giving us the clear edge over the terrorists and their deadliest weapon, roadside bombs.  It's called Buckeye (full name:  the Buckeye Precision Geo-Referenced Digital Airborne Camera System), which takes high-res digital 3-D pictures of Baghdad (and other cities') streets.

Then before one of our convoys travels the road, it takes another, spotlighting any changes – down to the size of a penny.  The system has cut roadside bomb attacks in many Iraqi cities 90%.  Focusing on the main supply routes, it has virtually eliminated ammo trucks and fuel tankers getting blown up.

We are winning in Iraq, no matter how much the Democrats and their media poodles wish to deny and ignore it.