Though he has plenty of admirers, Steiner has been attacked on many fronts: for parading his learning too ostentatiously, for dropping phone books of names on the slightest pretext, for occasional sloppiness, for allowing his enthusiasm to outstrip his understanding.
But the lack of secularism is the reason for these religious pogroms which can flare up for the slightest pretext, as we see in Niger.
"Angela Gerekou has submitted her resignation for reasons of sensitivity and sensibility, so that there cannot be the slightest pretext to hurt the government," the statement said.
This is an era when people only need the slightest pretext to gather together in large numbers (witness festival season, or the massed response to the Olympics).
Stalin was afraid that Hitler would use the slightest pretext to launch an invasion, and warned his forces to do nothing provocative.
But given the Corporation's propensity for diving into the archives on the slightest pretext, the afternoon was not half as misty-eyed as one would have wished.
There were deaths from hanging for very minor misdemeanours; shot on the slightest pretext.
"On the slightest pretext, they execute people".
Men fought on the slightest pretext and often, at first, without witnesses; as this secrecy came to be abused (e.g., by ambushes), it soon became usual for duelists to be accompanied by friends or seconds.
She would hit Eva and explode into rages on the slightest pretext.
Major Shamad described the Americans on the Syrian border as jumpy and afraid, firing on the slightest pretext.
