Somali radio shut by Islamists re-opens without music:

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - A Somali radio station closed by Islamists for playing local love songs deemed to encourage immorality returned to the airwaves on Monday after pledging to stop broadcasting music.

“We’ve been on air since midday,” Said Haga Afrah, director of Radio Jowhar, told Reuters. “We are powerless so we have to heed their call to stop playing music on air.”

Islamist leaders who control Jowhar, an agricultural town 56 miles north of Mogadishu, ordered the station closed on Saturday in the latest show of hardline religious tendencies in the movement which has taken over a swathe of southern Somalia.

Local Islamist leader, Sheikh Mohamed Mahamud Abdirahman, went alone to the station to convey the message on Saturday.

“He said the music encourages immorality, we had no option but to close down,” Afrah said, adding that the station would have to adjust its programs to fill the time.

So, even love and music are haram now? What are they going to forbid civilians from doing next...
- breathe?