Amany, the general director of Girls Only, holds a Bachelor of Science in computer science and works as a graphic designer. She is an enthusiastic young woman who wants to contribute to society by removing the hurdles that stand in the way of change and progress. At first, she thought of publishing a magazine, but then she realized that people nowadays are attracted to audio and visual media more than print ones. So, she decided to make a radio station. She looked for other girls with modern views and creative ideas, and together they started Girls Only, which is available only over the Internet. As Amany is well aware, putting her content on the Internet is the best way to avoid government censorship. Amany is not concerned by the seemingly limited scope of an online radio station; she believes that “in five years or less from now, Internet radio stations will be much more listened to than ordinary radio.”

The station aims to be an outlet for women who have long been silenced. “The idea of the radio station came to me as I was trying to imagine the future of Egyptian women… I felt so worried about it,” said Amany.

In a very short period of time, the station has succeeded in attracting a huge audience all over the Arab World. According to Amany, there are now more than 25,000 listeners everyday from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria; the number of listeners is increasing daily. Listeners range from 9 to 55 years old.
The radio station’s major success comes from its intriguing talk shows. One example is “It’s Not Life Any More,” in which issues such as divorce, spinsterhood, and unemployment are discussed. Another show, “She’s Worth a 100 Men” focuses on helping women build self-confidence, control their anger, demand their rights and deal more effectively with others. “Headache” is the daily news show, with a comedic edge. The other shows on-air include “Our People,” “First-year Hijabi,” and “How to be a Role Model”.

In addition to entertaining its audience, the station also works on spreading awareness and empowering women. Amany thinks that women in Arab and Muslim societies sometimes bear responsibility for the injustices they face. “I am not trying to regain rights,” she said, “but what I believe in is that women themselves are responsible for giving up their own rights when they believe in the notions that view them as second-class citizens. This feeling may have resulted from the beliefs and the teachings in the society they were raised in. In our station’s programming, we stress firmly the fact that a woman is not different from a man in her rights and duties.” The radio station and its audience represent a growing desire among Arab women to counter such notions by articulating their individual perspectives.

A Jordanian man has been jailed for seven-and-a-half years for killing his married sister in what he said was an act to save the family’s honour.

The man strangled the 16-year-old after she refused to explain absences from her marital home, the court heard. It emerged she had seen a female friend.

The sentence had been reduced as her family decided not to press charges.

Jordan has been criticised in the past for giving lenient sentences in so-called honour killing cases.

Such offences have in the past carried sentences as light as just six months.

Around 15 to 20 women are murdered each year in Jordan, often by male relatives in the name of family “honour”.

يا من تقولون ان قلب وضعنا المأساوي الى الوضع الذي نريد هو من ضرب الجنون والخيال ((وأحيانا المجون))، يجب ان تراجع نفسك، محمد(ص) هو من أسس نواة الأمة الاسلامية ، بغض النظر عن واقعهم الحالي ، نشر فكرا حمله الملايين من البشر لأنه أسس على جعل مصلحة الانسان ((بغض النظر عن جنسه)) هي العليا، ثم بدعوة محمد(ص) ومن كان معه ، قال تعالى: ((لقد كان لكم في رسول الله أسوة حسنة لمن كان يرجو بالله واليوم الآخر))..صدق الله العظيم

WORLDWIDE outrage has rightly greeted reports that Saudi Arabia’s “justice” system recently sentenced a young woman, gang-raped by seven men, to 200 lashes for being alone with a male friend who was not related to her through blood or marriage.
We stand with and commend the actions of decent people like Nancy Cunningham of Halifax, who has launched a letter-writing campaign in support of the Saudi woman persecuted under her country’s misogynistic, oppressive system.
Sadly, such gender apartheid practices in the Middle Eastern kingdom are nothing new. Under that nation’s arbitrary, discriminatory laws – based on an extreme interpretation of Islam, Wahhabism – women are routinely denied the right to vote, drive, study or work in certain fields and, of course, have their personal freedom to move about often sharply curtailed by the requirement that they be accompanied by appropriate male guardians.
In this case, Saudi justice officials claim that in 2006, the then 19-year-old woman, dressed provocatively, was involved in an adulterous tryst with an unrelated man in a car; she and her partner were then kidnapped by seven men at knifepoint and sexually assaulted. Her assailants received between 10 months and five years for kidnapping. She was sentenced to 90 lashes for being with a man unrelated to her. When she spoke out in the media, denying the allegations, and her lawyer appealed, a vengeful Saudi court suspended the lawyer and upped her penalty to 200 lashes. Her attackers’ sentences were also increased, to between two and nine years.
The international reaction has had some effect. Saudi foreign minister Saud al-Faisal called the ruling a “bad judgment;” the case is to be reviewed by the judiciary. But there’s little doubt such actions come only as a result of widespread condemnation of the sentence, as the case itself reflects the discrimination women and girls face daily in Saudi Arabia.
The greater shame, however, is that it takes such incidents to rouse Western leaders to denounce the ongoing reality of brutal gender apartheid – a term used to describe what’s happening to women in many nations – in Saudi Arabia.
Most of the time, there is only silence, and the sickening spectacle of Saudi Arabia as a member of the UN’s new Human Rights Council, defending its despicable treatment of women in the kingdom as an internal, religious matter.