What's in a name?

 

Although I do not like hunting and I don’t much like guns or crossbows, I do accept that some people hunt animals with good reason. As much as I like rabbits, foxes and deer, they can be a nuisance and, with the latter two, they don’t have many (any?) natural predators in the UK. Overpopulation and disease are always issues and culling is a reasonable control measure.

But I abhor killing any animal just to pose like a gurning pillock by the carcass and take home a tatty rug with teeth or a grinning trophy for the wall. The dentist who killed Cecil the lion was wrong. Whatever the context, at every level he was wrong, wrong, wrong. Sadly what he did happens all the time: big game hunters pay big bucks to kill big bucks and other exotic animals. But we generally never hear about it.  What makes this killing so different?  Why is this dentist forced into hiding after so much social media opprobrium? This particular killing of a beautiful creature made headlines because the lion had a name. The lion had a cute name: Cecil the lion. He didn't kill any old lion. He killed Cecil! HE KILLED CECIL THE LION. This is the biggest crime since the brutal murder of Bambi’s mother.

Killing Cecil was a loathsome act and, by the international outrage it caused, you would think it was as disgusting as ISIS filming the beheadings of multiple Muslims who disagreed with their perverted ISIS ideology. ISIS has committed horrible, outrageous, inhuman atrocities and they get a negative press, but not the same vitriol as that reserved for this Cecil-killing big game hunting dentist.

Perhaps the next time, and there will surely be a next time, ISIS publishes such disgusting murders we should name the victims? It is disturbing enough to see five humans beheaded but to see “Ahmed the tailor”, “Abdul the farmer”,  “Hakeem the clerk”,  “Majeed the doctor” and “Aaban the teacher” brutally tortured and killed might outrage the civilized world as much as reading about the killing of an animal.

It is important to put a name on murder. Too often today violence is minimized by terminology. Senseless murder is called execution: brutal terrorists are called radicals. Perhaps we should give every victim a name. Perhaps we should show every victim’s family in mourning. Perhaps if we put a name to the victims of terrorism, their outrageous acts of inconceivable violence will receive the same justifiable vitriol and disgust as does the killing of a lion. Not just any lion: Cecil the lion.