LGBTQ community can visit Qatar, but don’t try to change us: Minister

Members of the LGBTQ community can come to the FIFA World Cup in Qatar but the West cannot “dictate” what Qataris should believe, the country’s energy minister told Germany’s Bild newspaper.

This comes as German interior minister Nancy Faeser sported the “OneLove” armband at the national team’s match against Japan last week and criticised Qatar’s human rights.

“If they want to visit Qatar, we have no problem with it,” minister of state for energy affairs Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi said of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, speaking to Bild.

But he said the West wants to “dictate what it wants” to Qatar, where homosexuality is illegal.

“If you want to change me so that I will say that I believe in LGBTQ, that my family should be LGBTQ, that I accept LGBTQ in my country, that I change my laws and the Islamic laws in order to satisfy the West – then this is not acceptable,” he added.

Earlier, a Danish journalist was told by the Qatari police to remove a OneLove armband while filming a World Cup segment in Doha. Jon Pagh, from Danish station TV 2 Sport, was filming outside the Denmark squad’s hotel when he was stopped by local police and was told to take off the armband, which has been controversial during the FIFA World Cup 2022 as homosexuality is illegal in Qatar.

Captains of England, Wales, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany and Denmark were set to wear the OneLove armbands at the World Cup, in a show of support of the LGBTQ+ community. But they announced in a joint statement that the idea had been dropped.