The Dalai Lama recently completed a 10-day teaching tour of the United States (with guest appearance by Buddhist celebrity Richard Gere), and has shared some of idealism regarding the “common ground” between Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam in a New York Times op-ed piece.

(I’m guessing he’s not a big fan of Stephen Prothero’s new book, “God Is Not One.”)

Here’s what he writes about Islam:

Let me tell you about the Islam I know. Tibet has had an Islamic community for around 400 years, although my richest contacts with Islam have been in India, which has the world’s second-largest Muslim population. An imam in Ladakh once told me that a true Muslim should love and respect all of Allah’s creatures. And in my understanding, Islam enshrines compassion as a core spiritual principle, reflected in the very name of God, the “Compassionate and Merciful,” that appears at the beginning of virtually each chapter of the Koran.

Check out Tricycle’s blog for more on the Dalai Lama’s U.S. visit and related news; you can also follow him on Twitter.

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