One can consider Divine and Infernal just a Fae that has become so powerful, their aura interacts differently. One could consider at one point there was a "Ra" aura, a "Zeus" aura, an "Athena" aura, which all did subtly different effects. Once the influence of the Greek, Egyptian, Roman,etc Gods waned and the Abrahamic religions got stronger, they all just faded in to a generic Fae aura.
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I dug up my Third rulebook. p.327: "The Divine Realm is the manifestation of the supernatural power of the Church and all with faith in the One True Deity. All other powers not of the Church are unholy, and considered aligned with the Devil and the forces of Hell." p.294 treats Constantinople, let alone Palestine, as a place of legend.
While that doesn't name Islam, it seems pretty clear cut that it's opposed to the Dominion (as are all pagan gods). It reads to me like someone trying to describe the (Western Europe) mediaeval worldview without being too offensive.
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The way out is to say that God is (partially) beyond human understanding. Puny humans simply cannot understand how multiple contradictory belief systems are all correct, just like an ant cannot even begin to understand any proof of Pythagoras' theorem - or how different proofs might all prove the same theorem!
The fault in either case is in the limited intellectual capacity of the observer, not in the truth what is being observed.
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I can be fine with that, the problem is with the Direct Line to God aka angels, and how they're easily (well, relatively) accessible to holy men.
Summon angel "Hey, Gabriel, should we declare holy war against the heathen Muslims?" "Sure, you have Divine blessing!"
Summon angel "Hey, Jibril, should we declare holy war against the heathen Chrstians?" "Sure, you have Divine blessing!"
Hmm.
Sense Holiness and Unholiness is also tricky here. "Let us burn down this accursed house of Satan! That.... has a Divine aura.... hmmm...."
My personal solution is to just say the angels themselves don't understand God's will either, and that he indeed does support opposite things. He's Incomprehensible, even to the angels on high.
It's not just puny men that don't understand him. Even archangels don't.
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Holy man: Hey, Gabriel, should we declare holy war against the heathen Muslims?
Gabriel: The First commandment is: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. And the Second is: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Holy man: Uhm, I guess that love of God takes precedence and I should bash the heathens, then right?
Gabriel: A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit.
Holy man: I'm still not quite sure what you are saying, Gabriel. Can you be clearer?
Gabriel: A child talks like a child, thinks like a child, reasons like a child. But the ways of childhood were never mine.
Holy man: Aagh! I do not understand!
Gabriel: My Com is +10.
It's quite possible that angels - at least some - understand God better than what a human possibly could short of a miracle. Even if I can literally see the Gabriel-Rosenberg reconstruction theorem, I'm still not capable of explaining it to the average kindergarten kid.
That's possible too! Some parts of my brain don't understand how others work, after all 
... hmmmm... maybe I botched my Sense Holiness and Unholiness roll? Or maybe Satan is atempting to deceive me? Or maybe ... hmmmm...
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[quote="ezzelino, post:23, topic:173906, username:ezzelino"]
The way out is to say that God is (partially) beyond human understanding. Puny humans simply cannot understand how multiple contradictory belief systems are all correct, just like an ant cannot even begin to understand any proof of Pythagoras' theorem - or how different proofs might all prove the same theorem![/quote]
Well you can't understand how contradictory things would all be correct because they can't all be correct if they're contradictory. The only way to get around that would be to argue that god is using its divine reality defying powers to simultaneously make multiple contradictory things correct, which is fair enough, but then it is making those contradictory things correct for no reason other than to cause strife and bloodshed on earth, something that none of the faiths that worship it beleive it would do and something that it should not do anyway as it is an ultimate good, all loving, etc. This is especially bad as both the Christian and Islamic conceptions of god seek to bring all people into worship of him, so keeping this conflict going intentionally acts against its purpose. And ultimately the only way to argue past that is the old "he works in mysterious ways" cop-out.
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Gabriel being too stupid or evil to give a straight answer, especially to someone he knows needs a straight answer as he is an "average kindergarten kid" is not a coherent argument. Either he is too stupid to communicate correctly or else he is intentionally miscommunicating to create division and strife, neither of which fit with the whole "universal good" thing.
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Brilliant. I would give it two hearts if I could.
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Or Gabriel is just too different. Angels aren't humans. Not even close to being humans.
An angel trying to explain things to a human might be like a cat trying to explain things to a dog.
Or like an adult trying to explain things to a very young child. Is the adult stupid or evil just because they can't make the young child understand just why they shouldn't play with electrical outlets?
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This.
The child will ask "why?" over and over.
And he will cry for a "straight answer" to his simple question like there's no tomorrow.
I was that child once.
I remember the frustration and the rage and the sense that the adults were stupid and/or evil.
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A character with +10 com can give those straight answers. "If you can't explain it to a 6 year old, you do not understand it yourself"/"Explain it to a barmaid" etc.
For Gabriel to not explain it, especially something as simple as "Does god approve of action X", it has to be a willfull choice by gabriel not to explain it. And you can't even argue that it is beyond explanation, or that god does not want it explained, as scripture and the angels and stuff show god wants it explained.
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Try explaining things to a 1 year old. Doesn't matter how good you are at explaining, there are many things the 1 year old just won't understand.
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What makes you think that "Does god approve of action X" is a simple question to answer for all X? To me, it would be extremely surprising if it were so, God being infinite: in all sufficiently powerful logic systems the seemingly simple question "Is statement X true?" is impossible to answer for all X.
Well, maybe it's not beyond all explanation.
But maybe it's beyond Gabriel's power to explain to a man.
And maybe a sufficiently good explanation would have ... undesirable consequences (see Ted Chiang's short story "Understand")?
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Because it IS a simple question. God being omnipotent means that all of the complexity behind the scenes is handled by him/it, and so the only thing the end user/worshipper needs to know is a simple yes or no. And the "free will" angle doesn't come in to play as the end user/worshipper does not have to follow through with gods will.
Eh, never mind. I got the answer I wanted ages ago and I wanted to avoid religion bashing. While this thread hasn't devolved to that (thankfully) the empty nonsense it has devolved to isn't much better.
Thanks to all those who answered.
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It is not really a simple question.
Who will do X? Why are they doing X? When will they do X - today? tomorrow? next week?
Exactly how will they go about doing X?
Those, and many many other things may change the answer.
Besides, the question assumes that "Does God approve?" even can be answered by a simple yes or no. His opinion might be far more complex than simply approving or not.
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I would also mark your post as an answer too, but as far as I can see you can only mark one as a solution. The other one seems to be more definitive wording so it seemed more suitable, but I apologise that you do not also get solution credit, as I assume that has some value on the forum.
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My two cents:
I run God as absolute, infallible, and all-mighty in every respect... in Divine and Infernal Regios. In those areas, all of the 'biblical history' is absolutely correct. Everywhere else, the reality is that the big bang happened many billions of years ago, and the 'celestial spheres' nonsense is all made up by people who haven't yet worked out the truth.
Medieval Europeans accept the Christian doctrine veiwpoint of cosmology as default, and have picked and chosen ancient 'authorities' (Aristotle, mostly) who align with & reinforce those views. Most magi start with the idea of the 'celestial spheres' as a unquestioned and unnoticed foundational belief, so the real Hermetic Limit of the Lunar Sphere is simply one of institutional inertia.
The Infernal is just Divine auras with (in a sense) a negative score; it is every bit as much the version of the world that God is imposing on the world.
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Angels pop up in all sorts of Biblical and apocryphal situations and each time they have given anything but the clear answers that everyone wanted. Can anyone think of an example where an angel shows up and you're left thinking, "well, that clears that up"? For angel messages "Be not afraid!" is about as straightforward as they get -- and that's because their appearance is portrayed as terrifying.
If you get an angel to show up and ask it a question it's more likely to tell you to sacrifice your firstborn child, or to wrestle with it, or to leave your city and home and don't look back whatsoever. Or, go visit a random stable. They're messengers, for sure, but you don't get to decide what message they're giving.
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The contradictions between Judaism, Christianity and Islam are an issue strongly felt by intellectuals of the 13th century. Resolving that in game by "asking an angel and then going public" just marks the character as a bigot, though.
There are the late 13th century Le cento novelle antiche with the following story developed over time from already earlier sources:
How the Sultan being in need of money, sought to find occasion to proceed against a Jew
The Sultan, being in need of money, was advised to proceed against a rich Jew, who lived in his country, and to try to take away his substance from him.
The Sultan sent for this Jew and asked him what was the best religion, thinking he will say surely the Jewish faith, when I will tell him that he sins against mine. And if he says the Saracen, I will ask him why he is a Jew.
The Jew, hearing the question, replied: Sire, there was a father who had three sons, and he had a ring with a precious stone, one of the finest in the world. Each of the sons begged this father that he should leave him this ring at his death. The father, seeing that each of them desired it, sent for a good jeweller and said to him: master, make me two rings just like this one, and set in [169]each of them a stone resembling this one. The jeweller made the rings so that no one knew the real gem apart save the father. He sent for his sons one by one, and to each he gave a ring in secret, and each believed he had the true ring, and no one knew the truth save the father. And so I tell you of the faiths which are three. God above knows best of all, and his sons who are ourselves each of us thinks he has the true one.
Then the Sultan hearing the man get out of the difficulty in this manner, did not know how to entrap him, and let him go. 1
It is quite obvious, that a game like Ars Magica can not go beyond this without destroying its background.
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This makes me ask: Why aren't there faeries around, pretending to be God or Jesus? 
Or maybe there are 
Recently, I heard a 5-years old describe adults as being stupid, so that fits 
This is a great story, thanks! 