Behind every story,
a person.
Peace Pavilion records the lived experiences of Muslim Americans in communities across the country, in their own voices — and is building Unsira™, the living memory infrastructure that protects them.
For more than four centuries, Muslims have been part of American life — as enslaved Africans, immigrants, entrepreneurs, artists, soldiers, public servants, and citizens. Yet much of what that history felt like, and what people hoped to leave behind, remains outside the public record.
We are changing that, one story at a time.
More than 125 hours of lived experience recorded. Four states. Three languages. Recording continues now across Orlando, Kissimmee, and Sanford.
I came from India in 1977, a twelve-year-old Muslim girl. I never found myself in the Philadelphia school I entered — not in the history lessons, not in the textbooks, not in anything I was taught there.
Nearly fifty years later, I still hear Muslim youth say the same thing — that they don’t see themselves, that they struggle to name their own identity and belonging.
One generation went unnamed.
A second is going now. I will not hand a third the same silence.
Meanwhile the elders who could give this country a human reference point are going. My oldest storyteller is 94. Some died before we reached them.
Ghazala Salam, Founder and President
This is not one story.
It is millions.
Muslim Americans are not one people or one experience.
No single story can represent all of them. That is the point.
What we are building
We collect lived experience in people’s own voices, preserve it on the terms the storyteller sets, and activate it in public life — through exhibitions, classrooms, and community programs — only in the ways they have allowed.
Building a Legacy
Our community work in Central Florida, where we are recording lived experiences and building the Living Memory Collection. Young people from these communities are trained to record the stories of their own elders.
See the Work →Unsira
The infrastructure behind every story — how it is collected, preserved, connected, and shared: from the storyteller’s voice, through preservation and interpretation, into public engagement and lasting legacy. Peace Pavilion is building it.
Explore Unsira →Museum of Muslim Stories
A national institution where these stories will have a permanent public home. It does not exist yet. What will fill it is being recorded now.
The Museum →Together, that becomes a national record of Muslim American life, carried forward by the people who lived it.
Become part of the work.
Tell your story
Sit with a trained facilitator and talk about where you come from, what happened, what it meant, and what you would want someone to understand fifty years from now.
Share Your Story →Name someone
Most people do not think their own life is worth recording. Someone else usually knows better. If there is an elder, a founder, a neighbour whose story should not be lost, tell us about them.
Get in Touch →Bring us to your community
If there are people near you whose stories should be recorded, we will come and sit with them.
Bring a gathering to your community →Some people record a story. Some bring us to their community, or support the work so that it can continue. All of it is the same work.
Support Peace Pavilion →