Somali radio station returns to air minus music

[Nicholas]

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- A Somali radio station closed by Islamists for playing local love songs deemed to encourage immorality returned to the airwaves 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 (90 kilometers) north of Mogadishu, ordered the station closed Saturday in the latest show of hardline religious tendencies in the movement that has taken over a swathe of southern Somalia.
Local Islamist leader, Sheikh Mohamed Mahamud Abdirahman, went alone to the station to convey the message 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.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060911/...ltBHNlYwM3MTY-