Somali jihadists close down radio station for reporting on protests

Sharia Alert and Somali Jihad Update from News.com.au: "Somali Islamists close down media"

ISLAMIST gunmen who captured the Somali port of Kismayo have forcibly closed a private media network there which they accuse of distorting news about protests against the takeover, journalists said today.

Islamist fighters on battle-wagons turned up at HornAfrik Radio's Kismayo offices late yesterday, ordering staff to stop operations, the National Union of Somali Journalists said.

"We are strongly bothered by this show of aggression against this media house, which is a conscious attack on the freedom of the press and fundamental freedom of expression," said union secretary general Omar Faruk Osman.

[...]

... there have been anti-Islamist protests this week in Kismayo, and Somalis in general are becoming increasingly worried about signs of hardline practices by the movement, which was born out of sharia courts.

The Islamists' rise has challenged the aspirations of Somalia's western-backed interim government - based in the provincial town of Baidoa - to restore central rule to the Horn of Africa nation for the first time since 1991.

Islamist sources said HornAfrik had made false broadcasts about this week's protests in Kismayo, including reports that a boy had died and women were mistreated in the violence.

The Islamists say they are simply restoring law and order to Somalia after 15 years of anarchy since the ousting of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. They are also openly calling for mainly Muslim Somalia to be ruled by a sharia system.

The above paragraph seems to separate the aims of the jihadists to "restore law and order" and to establish Sharia law. But a decline in crime rates is only part of their larger agenda, which would impose the entirety of the Islamic social order, including the governance of minute details of individual behavior.