Word: anathema
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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That idea is anathema to practically every state in the Middle East and is an indication of the extent to which an Iranian victory over Iraq is causing fear and consternation throughout the region. Saddam Hussein may somehow survive in spite of his army's defeat, but he is vulnerable because he is a Sunni Muslim in a country whose population is 60% Shi'ite, the branch to which Iran's Ayatullah belongs. Although Saddam Hussein could be replaced by another Sunni, the gulf states are most worried by the thought of a Shi'ite government...
...from voting for Parliament or holding offices of public trust. Only in the early 19th century did the laity, against the wishes of the Catholic hierarchy, work out a formula that combined political loyalty to the Crown with spiritual loyalty to the Pope. Though the Vatican never withdrew its anathema against the Crown, this year's diplomatic recognition relegates it to history's dustbin. Catholics regained full citizenship rights in 1829, the English hierarchy was re-established in 1850, and devout Catholics were allowed to graduate from Oxford and Cambridge by 1871. In this historical context, British Catholics...
...Israel currently sees the PLO as anathema to its security although many reasonable Israelis recognize that some kind of Palestinian automony in the West Bank and Gaza is inevitable, if only for demographic reasons. And the PLO an umbrella organization which encompasses 55 separate branches, seems the most visible and most likely representative of the Palestinian people. But rushing to include the Soviet-backed PLO in bargaining does not immediately ensure a settlement favorable to any party, let along all parties...
...these tendencies were tragically accelerated by the election of Richard Nixon. Nixon was probably the only leader who could disengage from Viet Nam without a conservative revolt. Yet his history of partisanship had made him anathema to most of the responsible Democrats. Radical opposition to the war thus fed on and merged with hatred of Richard Nixon on the part of many who had no sympathy for radicalism in general. The virulence of dissent was not moderated by those who, presumably, stood for values of civilized discourse and civic responsibility. Their yearning to expiate guilt shattered forever the existing foreign...
...idea that such a transcendent being might have had a context would have been anathema to the baroness, but her collection became the core of the Guggenheim Museum. Meanwhile, the blazing torch of devotion has turned into a curatorial flashlight, poking abruptly here and there amid the somewhat musty recesses of the Jugendstil. Such are the sorrows of no longer believing that art and religion are the same thing...