What is it about?
This article explores how Muslims in Tanga, Tanzania navigate debates about whether women's voices should be heard in public. Many Muslims believe that a woman's voice is 'awrah—something that should be kept covered, like the body. Yet Radio Nuur, a nondenominational Islamic station, began hiring women as journalists and hosts in 2022. Through three years of fieldwork, I documented how women at the station negotiate these restrictions: learning to use "strong" rather than "soft" voices on air, positioning themselves as giving voice to their communities, and building careers despite being told their voices might seduce male listeners. The article shows that Islamic media is becoming a space where gender norms are being rethought—not through theological revolution, but through the daily work of women who insist on being heard.
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Photo by Jacob Hodgson on Unsplash
Why is it important?
This research challenges common narratives about Muslim women as silenced or oppressed by showing how they actively negotiate religious authority in their own terms. It demonstrates that religious institutions don't simply "include" women—inclusion requires ongoing material labor, institutional support, and women's strategic navigation of competing interpretations of Islam. At a moment when Tanzania has its first Muslim woman president, understanding how Muslim women are reshaping public religious discourse matters for both scholarship and policy.
Perspectives
This is my first publication from years of fieldwork at Radio Nuur, and I'm thrilled that readers can finally see the journalists, hosts, and listeners who shared their lives with me. The photographs throughout the article matter enormously—they show the collaborative work of broadcasting, the modest dress that's as important as vocal propriety, and the faces of women who are changing what Islamic media looks and sounds like. This article is just the beginning; I'm working on a book that will tell the fuller story of Radio Nuur's experiment in nondenominational broadcasting and the women who are making their voices heard despite theological debates that would silence them.
Dr KD Thompson
University of Wisconsin Madison
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A Woman Is Not Created Mute: An Ethnography of Gender and Voice on Islamic Radio in Tanga, Tanzania, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, February 2026, Oxford University Press (OUP),
DOI: 10.1093/jaarel/lfag003.
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