Peace Pavilion records and stewards the lived experiences of Muslim Americans, in their own voices and on their own terms.
We believe people should hold real authority over how their lives, communities, and histories are remembered.
To preserve, interpret, and share Muslim American lived experiences as an essential part of America’s shared history — and through them, to create greater understanding, belonging, and human connection.
History is not only what happened. It is what people remember, what they make meaning from, and what they choose to pass on.
Why this work, and why now →I’ve spent years walking through museums filled with extraordinary objects. Almost every time, I left with the same feeling. I never met anyone.
Ghazala Salam, Founder and President
Objects survive on their own. People have to be asked, while they are still here to answer.
A trained facilitator sits with one person and records their lived experience in their own voice. Nothing is recorded until the storyteller has understood what will happen and decided, use by use, what they permit.
More than 125 hours recorded. Four states. Three languages.
See how a session works →Unsira™ is the living memory infrastructure Peace Pavilion is designing and building. It holds what people share on the terms they set, and keeps those terms in force long after the recording ends.
The methodology and the consent architecture are complete and in use today. The software is in development — for now the work runs by hand.
More about Unsira →One facilitator, one storyteller, one conversation. The room has to be right before anything else can be.
Young people from these communities trained to record their own elders. What they record stays in the community it came from.
In time, a national museum dedicated to Muslim American lived experience. That institution does not exist yet.
The Museum →Peace Pavilion Inc is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Orlando, Florida. Founded and led by Ghazala Salam, with a founding board of directors.
