The Sacramento Bee

ISLAMABAD — Last week, police officers in the eastern Pakistan city of Lahore visited a mosque run by Ahmadis, a minority Muslim sect considered by the rest of the country to be heretical. They looked around, and then announced their conclusion: The mosque looks too much like a mosque.

So, two laborers who accompanied the police picked up their hammers and chisels and began removing Koranic verses etched over the building’s doorway, said Shahid Ataullah, a spokesman for the Ahmadi community in Lahore. The officers also told the Ahmadi clerics who run the mosque that the building’s minarets – the tall, spindly towers synonymous with mosque architecture – had to be covered up.

“For 28 years, this building has been here, and suddenly someone says this place looks too much like a mosque,” Ataullah said. “We can’t agree to this. This is fundamental to our beliefs. But we are told this is what the law is. And the cops say if we don’t do this, there will be rioting.”