Pakistan has always had an uneasy relationship with the promises it made to itself. Some were written into the Constitution, some spoken from the floor of the Constituent Assembly, and one was stitched rather beautifully into the national flag. The white stripe was meant to stand for those who would never be the majority but would remain no less Pakistani for that. It was a simple idea, almost innocent in its clarity: that the state would belong equally to those whose faith differed from the dominant one.

History, as it often does in this part of the world, complicated the sentence.

This month, an Ahmadi man was shot dead in Mandi Bahauddin while returning from his workshop. Police are investigating what they believe was a planned targeted killing. The facts of the case will take their course, and they must. But the killing has reopened a question Pakistan has postponed for far too long: what exactly does the white in our flag protect when the minority in question is one the majority has been taught to distrust?

What exactly does the white in our flag protect when the minority in question is one the majority has been taught to distrust?

What exactly does the white in our flag protect when the minority in question is one the majority has been taught to distrust?

Ideally speaking, a Pakistani should be able to happen to be Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Parsi, Kalash or Ahmadi in much the same way he happens to be from Lahore rather than Larkana, fond of cricket rather than hockey, inclined towards Faiz rather than Ghalib. Faith is infinitely more profound than these things, of course, but citizenship cannot be proportionately thinner because of it.

This is worth saying at a moment when Pakistan has, in fact, begun correcting some old mistakes.

The state has moved against Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan with a seriousness few would have predicted several years ago. TLP was formally proscribed in October 2025 after deadly unrest; offices and........

© Daily Times