RIYADH - Four Saudi ministries have appealed to King Fahd to reverse a ban on camera-equipped mobile phones in the kingdom, a local newspaper reported on Monday.
The ministries of interior, finance, trade and industry, and technology said such mobiles have become "a fait accompli like television and the internet," Al-Eqtissadiah said.
The ministries argued that most mobile phones would soon have installed cameras and that having to manufacture special phones for the Saudi market "would increase prices significantly," it added.
According to the daily, a recent survey showed a drop in mobile phone sales at distributors' outlets while trade prospered in individual shops that continued to sell camera-equipped phones illegally.
The ban has contributed to an increase in smuggling such phones from neighbouring countries, the paper said, quoting market sources.
Saudi Arabia's grand mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh has said that trading in such mobiles is un-Islamic because they "could be exploited to photograph and spread vice in the Saudi Muslim community.
Two Saudi women were badly beaten by other female guests at a wedding party in September when they were seen using a mobile phone to photograph the segregated celebration.
The apparently common use of such phones in the kingdom has often been the centre of controversy.
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