One struggle: Grieving Marcellus Williams, Gaza, and Lebanon

Last week, the state of Missouri executed Marcellus Khaliifa Williams after twenty-four years on death row, and despite a powerful campaign to try and stop this from going ahead. He maintained his innocence until the very end.

Williams’ killing has left countless people heartbroken given the history of the death penalty in the US and how it disproportionately affects black defendants, especially in cases where the victim is white. He was one among many black men who have been sentenced to death in the US – another prominent case is that of Mumia Abu Jamal, who’s been in prison since 1981 after being accused of murdering a white police officer.

Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who has defended many prisoners on death row, said about Williams’ case: “If I’m representing some white person who kills a black person, it’s relatively easy to get them off […] But if it’s a black person who kills a white person, it is vastly harder. And that’s totally racism.”

Williams was accused of murdering Felicia Gayle, a white former reporter who was stabbed to death in her home in 1998. But there was never any direct evidence linking him to the crime scene, and he was given an all-white jury at his trial. The prosecutor who handled the original case, William Bell, fought himself to block the execution due to concerns about Williams’ trial. He questioned the reliability of two main witnesses, and it later emerged that the prosecution had contaminated evidence on the murder weapon.

Despite documented flaws in his case, repeated attempts to get Williams’ sentence overturned remained unsuccessful. The Supreme Court ruled to uphold the original sentence on 12 September, while Missouri Governor Mike Parsons, a Republican, also refused to grant clemency to Williams.

Almost immediately, the outpouring of grief that ensued for Williams, both due to its timing and its nature, became inseparable from the widespread grief people have felt for the victims of Western-backed Israeli atrocities in Palestine and Lebanon.

Committed to the Palestinian struggle

That same night, protesters gathered outside the White House in support of Palestine and Lebanon also mourned the news of Williams’ execution. They shared his final words, "All praise be to Allah in every situation!" And they associated his killing with martyrdom as they chanted "We will honour all our martyrs, all our children, sons and daughters!"

These collective actions, which were particular to the US, are likely due to the fact that even amidst the darkness of his own circumstances, Williams was drawn to the Palestinian cause, and his heart ached for the struggles of the Palestinian people.

Upon his death many people also shared his poem The Perplexing Smiles of the Children of Palestine, in which he wrote:

‘in the face of apex arrogance

And ethnic cleansing by any definition

Still your laughter can be heard

And somehow you are able to smile

O Resilient Children of Palestine’

Some may find this confluence of causes to be surprising. But in reality, there are many common threads tying together the grief felt for both Williams and the ongoing genocide in Gaza which has now spilled into Lebanon.

Marcellus Williams wrote this poem as he stared down his own unconscionable murder. these two struggles are the same. pic.twitter.com/IcxBycSNKE

— c0rr3na 🍉 (@itscorrena) September 24, 2024

As activist Nerdeen Kiswani commented: ‘When it comes to Black and brown people, the state has always executed its violence on our communities […] within the U.S., we see this play out the most when it comes to Black folks in particular, and then abroad, we’re seeing this in Lebanon, we’re seeing this in Palestine’.

Racism & dehumanisation

In both cases, we have witnessed the sheer injustice faced by powerless groups at the mercy of those in power. We have witnessed the brutality of white supremacist institutions against people of colour. And we have witnessed the devaluing of Black and brown bodies that strips us of our right to life, freedom, and humanisation.

As activist and organiser Grace Siegelman wrote: ‘The death penalty and the cruelty of cases like Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams exemplify the systemic racism and through lines of enslavement that are still housed within the U.S. Criminal Justice System today.’

Williams’ execution, while a grave injustice in its own right, has come at a time when we have lived through a year of witnessing the genocide in Gaza. Every day we watch in despair as this genocide, instead of showing any signs of winding down or de-escalating, continues to expand.

One year of seeing images of mangled, charred, shredded bodies. One year of seeing amputated children and beheaded babies. One year of witnessing massacre after massacre on civilian targets. One year of reading about people dying preventable deaths due to disease, starvation, and treatable illnesses and injuries. One year of brazen, unfiltered racism and islamophobia.

The value of life

In answer to this relentless violence, we resist by investing everything we’ve got into human empathy. By showing solidarity. By recognising our shared humanity and our interconnected struggles and coming together against our allied oppressors.

PhD scholar Kerry Sinanan succinctly pointed this out when she said: ‘They are forcing us to watch spectacles of death so we feel hopeless & become selfish in our complicity.’

At this point in time, we are experiencing a moment of collective grief of which Williams is an essential part. His killing reinforced the message that the tragedy of loss of life is not weighed in numbers. We object to, and recognise the injustice in, the wrongful killing of one man with the same fervour as we would that of hundreds of Lebanese people or hundreds of thousands of Sudanese and Palestinians.

If our individual and collective humanity is going to survive this brutal period of bloodshed and destruction, we can only hope to do so by hanging on to the value of life. We must grieve every innocent life lost at the hands of imperialist, white supremacist oppressors.

Moreover, for Muslims in particular, faith has become a form of resistance in and of itself. Bearing this in mind, we revisit Williams’ last words: “All Praise Be To Allah in Every Situation”, and juxtapose them with footage of people in Gaza crying out ‘Hasbun’Allah wa ni’mal wakeel’; “Allah is sufficient for us and the best disposer of affairs”.

At this time of violent, global Islamophobia, we’re also witnessing the role of faith as a source of resilience for Muslims.  As Muslims experience the very worst of what white supremacist imperialism is capable of, they are holding on to their faith – because it’s the one thing colonisers will never be able to destroy.

Afroze Fatima Zaidi is a writer, editor and journalist. She has a background in academia and writing for online platforms.

Follow her on X: @afrozefz

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