Headline: "Islamic State group uses only half of a Quran verse to justify beheadings — see what’s in the other half"
It is not atypical for humans to do this, so it's odd that it's news. I would submit that all religious fundamentalists do this--as do secular ones. Perhaps the most prominent secular example is the sentence fragment pulled from the Constitution's Second Amendment by hardline gun advocates. And, for religious texts, it's not only taking part of a verse, but pulling a whole verse out on it's own. Many verses are sentence fragments themselves, and using a tidbit of a longer passage--whether it's a verse or part of one--can't be an accurate justifier (given that you hold such things to be possible in the first place.)
Because we exist in an ever-shifting mix of unpredictable circumstances and attitudes, I don't think there is a way for any declaration to be considered valid or relevant past the immediate moment in which it was created (assuming it was valid even then). This causes those who look to past declarations for justification of a current desire to carve out what they want and ignore the rest. We just pile up our problems by failing to move away from this faulty process. Instead, we should take responsibility for our current problems ourselves with fully contextual information from the here and now.
It is not atypical for humans to do this, so it's odd that it's news. I would submit that all religious fundamentalists do this--as do secular ones. Perhaps the most prominent secular example is the sentence fragment pulled from the Constitution's Second Amendment by hardline gun advocates. And, for religious texts, it's not only taking part of a verse, but pulling a whole verse out on it's own. Many verses are sentence fragments themselves, and using a tidbit of a longer passage--whether it's a verse or part of one--can't be an accurate justifier (given that you hold such things to be possible in the first place.)
Because we exist in an ever-shifting mix of unpredictable circumstances and attitudes, I don't think there is a way for any declaration to be considered valid or relevant past the immediate moment in which it was created (assuming it was valid even then). This causes those who look to past declarations for justification of a current desire to carve out what they want and ignore the rest. We just pile up our problems by failing to move away from this faulty process. Instead, we should take responsibility for our current problems ourselves with fully contextual information from the here and now.
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