I give him the benefit of the doubt, though. It could be he didn't know it was the Koran... why would someone hand him a Koran, anyway? Wouldn't ya think they'd hand him a Bible?
OTOH. Even if he knew it was the Koran, maybe it was a sign of respect for Islam. Although we do not hold all the same beliefs, there is a lot of good in Islam (not the minority wacko interpretation of it) that all of us can recognize.
And despite what some others believe, we do worship the same God, although in varying degrees of perfection.
But the bottom line for me is that in the matter of faith and morals, I'm with the pope. Whether or not he kissed the Koran matters not a whit to my faith.
Sometimes I think JPII fears the world will fall into something akin to the crusades. Only in our modern world, the results would be catastrophic.
How can allah be the God of Abraham? In the Christian faith, we believe that God made the Jews his chosen people but allah calls them pigs and monkeys? How can that be the same God? The leader the Muslims choose to follow was a polygamist pedophile ---Mohammed took a 6 year old child to be his "wife"? Nothing like the example Jesus set for his followers.
That's where I am also ---the Pope can bow down to the Hindu monkey god for all I care ---I'm still keeping my faith.
No Colleen they worship a different god
So when did Catholics start worshipping idols made from black meteorites?
Seriously, anybody that would compare Allah and Yahweh and think they are the same Entity is about as clueless as someone who would compare Bill Clinton and George Bush and think they are the same person. Just because they share the same title of "God" or "President" doesn't make them the same. The fact is that the nature of the Hebrew and Christian God can be found in the bible as easily as the nature of the Islamic God can be found in the Quran, and those natures are fundamentally incompatible.
I know who Allah is. I know its history (which, contrary to the claims of the muslims, long predates Islam). Allah is not the creator, and if Allah is another name for the god you worship, you are not worshipping the Creator.