In Times Square, American Muslims Claim Their Place in the American Story

 

In Times Square, American Muslims Claim Their Place in the American Story

At Broadway and 43rd Street, in the commercial glare of Times Square, the Muslim Public Affairs Council has placed a message meant to interrupt the usual spectacle of advertising, tourism and civic theater: “Muslim Stories are American Stories.”

The digital billboard campaign, launched June 25, is part of MPAC’s national America250 initiative, “We The People: Advancing the Unfinished Promise,” a month-long effort tied to the country’s 250th anniversary. The campaign’s argument is direct, and pointedly historical: American Muslims are not late arrivals to the national narrative, nor symbolic guests at the table. Their lives, labor, public service, sacrifice and cultural influence have helped shape the country from its earliest chapters to the present.

The video ad now playing above Times Square gathers a fast-moving constellation of American Muslim figures across politics, sports, law, activism, military service and the arts. Malcolm X appears alongside Muhammad Ali; Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib alongside Army Captain Humayun Khan; Academy Award-winning actor Mahershala Ali alongside Nusrat Choudhury, the first Muslim woman appointed as a federal judge; and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as part of a larger civic portrait of Muslim American visibility.

The choice of Times Square matters. Few places in the United States are more relentlessly public, more theatrical, or more fluent in the language of mass attention. To place Muslim American history there is to reject the quiet corner, the token mention, the paragraph added for balance. It is a demand for scale. It asks passersby, tourists, commuters, and the online audience now sharing the campaign across social media to consider a broader version of American memory.

MPAC’s campaign is built around a truth often ignored in mainstream accounts of the United States: Muslims have been present on this land since the colonial era, including enslaved African Muslims whose histories complicate any clean story of religious freedom or national innocence. From that beginning to today’s elected officials, judges, artists, athletes, soldiers, and organizers, the campaign frames Muslim American life as part of the country’s central question: who gets to belong inside “We the People”?

That framing gives the campaign its urgency. America250 is not only a birthday party; it is also an argument over memory. Anniversaries tend to polish the past until it becomes decorative, but MPAC is leaning into the tension inside the American promise. The campaign’s title, “Advancing the Unfinished Promise,” treats the Declaration not as a completed achievement, but as a standard the country is still struggling to meet.

Alongside the billboard campaign, MPAC has developed community toolkits for the anniversary year, including khutbah guidance, educational resources, lesson plans and programming materials for classrooms, congregations and interfaith settings. The aim is to move the message beyond one screen in Times Square and into the places where civic identity is taught, debated and lived.

In the end, the Times Square ad is less a plea for inclusion than a correction. The country is turning 250. MPAC’s message is that American Muslims are not asking to be added to the story after the fact.

They are saying: we helped write it.