At the heart of Taylor's horrific genius was an ability to manipulate West Africa's political, social and cultural values, seeming to smash deep taboos while subtly co-opting them for his purposes.

Although not offensive in nature, any pictorial representation of Mohammed is a deep taboo for many muslims.

"You have in Israel this deep taboo about security affairs," said Moshe Negbi, a legal commentator for Israel Radio and a Hebrew University law professor.

In a society where deep taboos surrounding rape persist and identity is passed, according to Muslim tradition, from father to child, the fate of these children and their mothers is uncertain.

Of the book, Ellen Goldner wrote that "In Smith's hands, then, "strange fruit" refers not to black bodies swaying in the summer breeze ... but to the damaged, "split", primarily white people raised in a culture of deep racial, sexual, and class-based taboos and conflict.

Such incidents seemed to cause Sarfi deep distress -as if she had been programmed with deep taboos about violating the physical laws governing "real" humans.

The scene that results is a hard one to read, a violation of a deep taboo, laid out in crushing, relentless detail.

I had the uncomfortable sense that by promoting interactions between patients and de-emphasizing the central role of the physician, I might be violating some deep taboo.

Nigeria is a deeply religious country, evenly divided between Christians and Muslims, and attitudes toward homosexuality, women's rights and marriage are dictated largely by scripture and enforced by deep social taboos.