Somalia's hyper-armed Islamist militia, al-Shabab, has banned men and women from shaking hands in a district under its control, according to this BBC report:

Under the ban imposed in the southern town of Jowhar, men and women who are not related are also barred from walking together or chatting in public.

It is the first time such social restrictions have been introduced.

The al-Shabab administration said those who disobeyed the new rules would be punished according to Sharia law.

The BBC's Mohamed Moalimuu in Mogadishu says the penalty would probably be a public flogging.

The militant group has already banned music in areas that it controls, which include most of central and southern Somalia.

While al-Shabab considers its next steps in consolidating the misery of Somalians, meanwhile, in Pakistan, locals are pretty riled up over the publication of a sex education book for Muslims by Dr. Mobin Akhtar despite the doctor's novel take on sex education from an Islamic perspective:

When I started to study what the Koran, Islamic law and religious scholars had to

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