Local elected officials and business leaders gathered on Atlantic Avenue on Wednesday to celebrate the illumination of the thoroughfare’s first-ever Ramadan holiday lights display.
The lights stand as a gesture of unity with the longstanding Muslim and Arab community in the neighborhood, according to the Atlantic Avenue Business Improvement District. The corridor has long been a center of Arab and Muslim culture in Brooklyn, and is dotted with locally-owned Middle Eastern businesses. But while the avenue gets decked out with lights and decorations for Christmas and other holidays each year, it has never before been illuminated for Ramadan.
