“If you’re sincere about your prayers for the Orlando victims, maybe you will tweet a message of support for the millions of similar LGBT people back home,” journalist Dhrubo Jyoti wrote in an open letter to Mr. Modi in the Hindustan Times.
Majority-Muslim countries that are allies of the United States also rushed to express sympathy — including Saudi Arabia, where homosexuality is illegal under its sometimes-harsh interpretation of Sharia. Punishments for same-sex relations in the kingdom include execution and chemical castration. [...]
But experts noted that condolence statements from Arab states where homosexuality is criminalized — and widely seen as un-Islamic — were careful not to specify the nature of the Orlando club or who was targeted there. [...]
In the Pew Research Center’s major study of religions in 2014, American Muslims were split on homosexuality. The poll found that 45 percent of American Muslims thought homosexuality should be accepted, and 47 percent should be discouraged.
That means Muslims are less accepting of homosexuality than most religious groups in the study — 66 percent of mainline Protestants, 70 percent of Catholics and more than 80 percent of Jews and Buddhists say gay relationships should be accepted. But it puts Muslims ahead of evangelical Christians and Mormons, just 36 percent of whom say homosexuality is acceptable.
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