In U.S., Muslim Moment Meets Christian Awakening

Bible sales soar as Halal Guys reach 400 locations

Prayer break: A vendor at a Halal food cart in Brooklyn takes time for worship, using a piece of cardboard as a makeshift prayer rug. Photo: The Editors.

America is in the middle of a Muslim moment and a Christian revival—at the same time.

Bible sales were up 12 percent in 2025 over 2024, the New York Times reports ( in print the news was buried beneath the soporific headline, “Book Sales Steady In Shifting Market.”) Television personality Rachel Maddow has publicly returned to Catholicism, and historian Niall Ferguson has left atheism for Anglican Christianity. Vice President Vance said in a December 2025 speech that “The only thing that has truly served as an anchor of the United States of America is that we have been, and by the grace of God, we always will be, a Christian nation….I’m not saying you have to be a Christian to be an American. I’m saying something simpler and truer. Christianity is America’s creed.”

Meanwhile, the “Halal Guys” chain is up to 400 locations, and describes itself as “one of the fastest-growing restaurant chains in America.” Lululemon is selling hijabs. And Mayor Mamdani of New York, after being sworn in on a Koran, said in his inaugural address, “I stand alongside construction workers in steel-toed boots and halal cart vendors whose knees ache from working all day.” If the halal cart vendors’ knees ache, it may not be from working, but from taking regular quick breaks to kneel on the hard ground to pray with only a piece of cardboard as padding. On January 2, 2026, the Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, directed that 16 landmarks—including One World Trade Center, Niagara Falls, Moynihan Train Hall, and the Kosciuszko Bridge—be illuminated green in honor of Muslim American Heritage Month.

This could go in at least two possible different directions.