JEDDAH: The King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Qur'an has asked the authorities to deal with shops that sell copies of the Holy Qur'an at high prices. Muhammad Salem Bin Shadid Al-Oufi, Secretary General of the Complex, said some of these shops sell copies to pilgrims and visitors at sky-high prices, exploiting their faith and the fact they do not know the real prices. Al-Oufi said he could not estimate what the price should be for a copy of the Holy Qur'an. “The holiness of the Qur'an makes it impossible,” he said, calling on shops to charge an “acceptable and reasonable price”. He said 98 percent of the complex's printed copies are distributed as gifts to Muslims around the world, adding that some copies are sold by the complex but at cost price, but this hardly constitutes one percent of the total number of copies printed. He said the Holy Qur'an has been translated into 50 languages, which will increase to 60 within the next five months. The complex's website contains the Holy Qur'an in seven languages, and it has the Middle East's largest compact disc factory that produces MP3 copies and translations. The complex's annual capacity is 13 million copies of each of the 260 products including copies of the Holy Qur'an, the Prophet's Sunnah, records, and translations and others. There are 1,700 people working at the complex, including scholars, university professors, technicians and administrators, with Saudis constituting about 79 percent of the total, he said.
