UAE emirate bans mannequins from shops

The emirate of Sharjah, a conservative member of the United Arab Emirates, has banned realistic mannequins from window displays and shops, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The municipality of Sharjah, neighbor to booming Dubai, imposed the ban in line with a fatwa -- religious edict -- issued by the local Islamic affairs department, the Arabic-language daily Al-Emarat Al-Yaum said.

The fatwa bans the use of female dummies unless "the head is taken away or the features of the face are erased," municipality official Khaled al-Jabri told the paper.