Well, since when is prayer "offensive"??? [And if it's the Mecca part or rug or # of times you're referencing, hey the religion TELLS them to do that...so what the blankety-blank is that about "solely responsible" if the religion tells them it's "responsible" to do that?]
(Usually when somebody makes the kind of comment you're making, it's because some adherent has been "wayward" in some kind of way...how is praying 5x, use of a rug, or toward Mecca a "wayward" Muslim action? Your comment makes absolutely no sense whatsoever)
As for Mormons, what have they LONG been told about baptizing the dead -- including criminals & murderers?
Well, we don't have to go back very far -- just last October -- when the Mormons held their one of two General Conferences for 2011:
Per LDS Church News (see 'They are not forgotten' — Family history brings stake together [Mormons obsess with the dead]): In the October 2011 general conference, Elder David A. Bednar reiterated the words of the Prophet Joseph Smith who said: "The greatest responsibility in this world that God has laid upon us is to seek after our dead."
Bednar was quoting Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 356.
Smith's great-nephew, Lds "prophet" Joseph Fielding Smith, further stated: “But greater than all this, so far as our individual responsibilities are concerned, the greatest is to become SAVIORS, in our lesser degree which is assigned us, for the dead who have died without a knowledge of the Gospel. Joseph Smith said, ‘The greatest responsibility in this world that God has laid upon us, is to seek after our dead’…It will suffice here to say that the Lord has placed upon us this responsibility of seeing that our dead receive the blessings of the Gospel. Said Joseph Smith: ‘Those saints who neglect it, in behalf of their deceased relatives, do it at the peril of their own salvation.’” (The Way to Perfection, pp. 153-154)
Now...how do we know that Joseph Smith had in mind for Mormons to BAPTIZE every deceased person?
“No man can enter into the Kingdom of God but by the door and through the means that Jesus Christ has offered to the children of men. …NOT A SOUL that has ever lived and died from off the face of this earth shall escape a chance to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. If they receive it and obey it, the ordinances of the gospel will be performed for and in their behalf, by their kindred, or their posterity in some generation of time after them, so that every law and every requirement of the gospel of Jesus Christ shall be carried out, and the promises and requirements fulfilled for the salvation of the living and also for the salvation of the dead.” (Teachings of Presidents: Joseph F. Smith, p. 307, 1998; original source “Latter-day Saints Follow Teachings of the Savior,” Scrap Book of Mormon Literature, 2 vols. 2:561-562).
So...Mormons are simply doing what they're DIRECTED to do by their leadership!
And that is to obsess with the dead: “There is hardly any principle the Lord has revealed that I have rejoiced more in than in the redemption of our dead…” (Teachings of Presidents: Wilford Woodruff, pp. 192-193)
For more on this, see: Are Mormon people LITERAL saviors of dead Jews, others? (The OTHER World Series: Vanity)