When Rohingya Muslims fled persecution and slaughter in Myanmar in past decades, tens of thousands found refuge in Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s holiest sites.

This time around, Muslim leaders from the Persian Gulf to Pakistan have offered little more than condemnation and urgently needed humanitarian aid.

Experts say the lack of a stronger response by Muslim-majority countries partly comes down to their lucrative business interests in Southeast Asia. Much of the Middle East is also buckling under its own refugee crisis sparked by years of upheaval in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan.

More than 500,000 people — roughly half the Rohingya Muslim population in Myanmar — have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh over the past year, mostly in the last month.