In Iran, in 1979, the Islamists seized power, hurling now familiar slogans against the west, Israel, decadence and social iniquity In fact, the idea that a modern state should be run according to a particular interpretation of Muslim teachings was far from as authentically local as its proponents claimed.
John Churton Collins thought the reception given Gosse a disgusting example of logrolling, and he thought Gosse's book the latest iniquity in the catalogue of crimes against literary scholarship and pedagogy then being perpetrated by the British university.
By contrast, Ed Miliband's diagnosis of structural iniquity in the British economy – low wages and stagnant living standards that rob the middle class of confidence in the future – is heavily influenced by analysis of exactly the same malaise in the US.
I see them as having a larger-than-life-size iniquity, in the derisory shade of a tree you could not even hang yourself on".
Some residents of Grimsby have been outraged after the Lincolnshire town was portrayed as a deprived den of iniquity in the latest film from Sacha Baron Cohen.
Of course, Ivison is right in his final conclusion: "apologies do not erase iniquity" in the same way that a diagnosis doesn't cure disease.
"We wanted to put human faces on some iniquities in the US and abroad, so that people might feel a little more empathy and inclination to help," said Kristof.
The jittery angst of "Company," the gothic view of human iniquity in "Sweeney Todd" and the disillusionment explored in "Merrily We Roll Along" are not exactly transformed into the beautiful-morning optimism of Mr. Sondheim's mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II.
They mean the classic difficulty of how we justify the existence of suffering and iniquity with belief in a God who created us, who loves us, and who providentially manages the world.
The biblical definition of love is about obedience to the commandments of Christ (2 John 6), not our conceits, and rejoices not in iniquity but in the truth (1 Corinthians 13:6).
