Jihad on Times Square

 by Kim Ezra Shienbaum

There are few places on earth more symbolically American -- or more globally recognizable -- than New York City’s Times Square. It is a commercial crossroads, a cultural billboard, and increasingly, a battleground for ideological messaging.

That’s why many New Yorkers and visitors were understandably bewildered -- if not outright angered -- by a massive green digital display dominating Times Square just before Christmas proclaiming: 

JESUS WAS PALESTINIAN. 

The color choice was no accident. Green is the traditional color of Islam, and the message itself was plainly political. Online reactions quickly labeled the display “divisive,” “inflammatory,” and “inappropriate.”

Yet the response was not universally negative. Some commentators praised the message as “thought-provoking,” a “bridge-building effort,” or even the beginning of a “national conversation” meant to emphasize that “Jesus is for everyone.”

The billboard’s sponsor, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), explained that its intent was to highlight supposed deep historical ties between Christianity and Islam. But intentions do not nullify consequences. Nor do slogans override history.

In light of the recent National Security Strategy’s warning about “civilizational erasure” in Europe, Americans would be wise to ask whether similar revisionism is now being imported -- quite literally -- into the heart of our most iconic public spaces. Are we witnessing the quiet imposition of a new religious and historical narrative, one that fundamentally alters Christianity’s foundational claims?

Two assertions embedded in the Times Square message demand direct rebuttal, because both distort history and theology in ways that are anything but benign. No, Jesus was not Palestinian. And no, the Christian-Muslim historical relationship has not been one of mutual partnership, but of subjugation, even conquest.

Jesus Was Not Palestinian

Using Scripture as our primary guide -- as Christians have done for two millennia -- the claim collapses immediately. Jesus’ birth and death occurred long before the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 A.D.), after which the Roman Emperor Hadrian renamed Judea Syria Palaestina as an act of punishment against the Jewish population. The term “Palestinian” did not exist in Jesus’ lifetime. It was later resurrected by the British during the Mandate period following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. To retroactively assign a modern political identity to a first-century Jew is not merely anachronistic -- it is historically dishonest.

The Bible, reinforced by centuries of Christian tradition and even European art -- from Giotto to Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper -- confirms that Jesus lived and died as a Jew. His burial followed Jewish law: wrapped in a shroud and interred swiftly after death. Archaeology further corroborates the biblical record. Bethlehem, Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, the River Jordan, Jerusalem’s Temple Wall, and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher all stand as tangible reminders of the Jewish and Christian roots of the land.

Later efforts by medieval Crusaders -- however flawed or ultimately unsuccessful -- underscore a basic historical reality: Christians understood the region as their spiritual inheritance long before Islam emerged in the seventh century.

Christians Under Islam Were Dhimmis, Not Allies

The second claim -- that Christianity and Islam share a long history of harmonious cooperation -- is equally misleading.

Under Islamic rule, Christians were classified as dhimmis: protected yet subordinate peoples. They paid the jizya tax for the right to practice their faith, were barred from public office, restricted in worship, and frequently subjected to social and legal humiliation. While periods of relative tolerance existed, equality did not. Cooperation was not the norm; subordination was.

This status is not merely a medieval relic. In many parts of the Islamic world today, Christian communities continue to shrink under Islamist pressure -- through discrimination, forced conversion, church destruction, and violence. The historical record is not one of shared stewardship but of enduring imbalance.

Conquest, Not “Shared Roots”

Beyond the subordinate status imposed on Christians in Muslim lands lies an even more inconvenient reality: the long and often brutal history of Islamic conquest of Christian civilization itself -- an irony rarely acknowledged amid today’s violent street protests condemning Israeli “settler colonialism.”

Islamic expansion into Christian Europe began in 711 A.D. with the Moorish invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, initiating an occupation that lasted more than seven centuries until its defeat in 1492. Far from a romanticized era of coexistence, Muslim rule imposed religious hierarchy, curtailed Christian autonomy, and periodically enforced conversion.

The pattern continued eastward. In 1453, the Ottoman Turks conquered Byzantium, extinguishing the Eastern Roman Empire and transforming Constantinople -- Christendom’s great eastern capital -- into Istanbul. Ottoman armies pushed deep into Europe, waging wars against the Habsburgs and advancing to the gates of Vienna before being halted in 1683.

Islamic conquest did not stop at Europe’s borders. Muslim empires expanded through Central Asia into the Indian subcontinent under the Mughal Empire, where non-Muslims were likewise reduced to second-class status.

This is the historical record conspicuously absent from modern narratives that weaponize the language of colonialism while ignoring centuries of Islamic expansion across Christian lands.

A Christmas Message That Wasn’t

The Times Square display was not an innocent holiday reflection. It was an act of historical revisionism wrapped in the language of inclusivity and projected onto one of America’s most visible public stages.

When religious history is reshaped to serve contemporary political narratives, something more than dialogue is at stake. What is being erased is not merely nuance, but truth -- truth about Christianity’s origins, about Jewish history, and about the real nature of Christian life under Islamic rule.

Civilizational erasure does not always arrive with violence. Sometimes it comes softly, glowing in green, asking Americans to question what they have always known -- just in time for Christmas.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/12/jihad_on_times_square.html