FILE PHOTO: Soccer Football - FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Preview, Doha, Qatar - November 18, 2022 The FIFA World Cup logo is pictured on the Corniche Promenade ahead of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch
BERLIN (Reuters) - Members of the LGBTQ community can go to the World Cup in Qatar but the West cannot "dictate" to Qataris what they should believe, Qatar's energy minister told Germany's Bild newspaper.
Qatar's relations with Germany have been choppy of late.
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser sported the "OneLove" armband at the national team's match against Japan last week and has criticised Qatar's human rights, but this week Germany sealed a deal to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Qatar.
"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 in comments published on Wednesday.
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.
(Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Alison Williams)
